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"Science," the Greek word for knowledge, when appended to the word "political," creates what seems like an oxymoron. For who could claim to know politics? More complicated than any game, most people who play it become addicts and die without understanding what they were addicted to. The rest of us suffer under their malpractice as our "leaders." A truer case of the blind leading the blind could not be found. Plumb the depths of confusion here.

56. I need hardly say that this sentence is an attempt to sum up my interpretation of the historical role of Plato's theory of justice (for the moral failure of the Thirty, cp. Xenophon's Hellenica, II, 4, 40-42); and particularly of the main political doctrines of the Republic; an interpretation which tries to explain the contradictions among the early dialogues, especially the Gorgias, and the Republic, as arising from the fundamental difference between the views of Socrates and those of the later Plato. The cardinal importance of the question which is usually called the Socratic Problem may justify my entering here into a lengthy and partly methodological debate.

(1) The older solution of the Socratic Problem assumed that a group of the Platonic dialogues, especially the Apology and the Crito, is Socratic (i.e., in the main historically correct, and intended as such) while the majority of the dialogues are Platonic, including many of those in which Socrates is the main speaker, as for instance the Phaedo and the Republic. The older authorities justified this opinion often by referring to an 'independent witness', Xenophon, and by pointing out the similarity between the Xenophontic Socrates and the Socrates of the 'Socratic' group of dialogues, and the dissimilarities between the Xenophontic 'Socrates' and the 'Socrates' of the Platonic group of dialogues. The metaphysical theory of Forms or Ideas, more especially, was usually considered Platonic.

(2) Against this view, an attack was launched by J. Burnet, who was supported by A. E. Taylor. Burnet denounced the argument on which the 'older solution' (as I call it) is based as circular and unconvincing. It is not sound, he held, to select a group of dialogues solely because the theory of Forms is less prominent in them, to call them Socratic, and then to say that the theory of Forms was not Socrates' but Plato's invention. And it is not sound to claim Xenophon as an independent witness since we have no reason whatever to believe in his independence, and good reason to believe that he must have known a number of Plato's dialogues when he commenced writing the Memorabilia. Burnet demanded that we should proceed from the assumption that Plato really meant what he said, and that, when he made Socrates pronounce a certain doctrine, he believed, and wished his readers to believe, that this doctrine was characteristic of Socrates' teaching.

(3) Although Burnet's views on the Socratic Problem appear to me untenable, they have been most valuable and stimulating. A bold theory of this kind, even if it is false, always means progress; and Burnet's books are full of bold and most unconventional views on his subject. This is the more to be appreciated as a historical subject always shows a tendency to become stale. But much as I admire Burnet for his brilliant and bold theories, and much as I appreciate their salutary effect, I am, considering the evidence available to me, unable to convince myself that these theories are tenable. In his invaluable enthusiasm, Burnet was, I believe, not always critical enough towards his own ideas. This is why others have found it necessary to criticize these ideas instead.

Regarding the Socratic Problem, I believe with many others that the view which I have described as the 'older solution' is fundamentally correct. This view has lately been well defended, against Burnet and Taylor, especially by G. C. Field (Plato and His Contemporaries, 1930) and A. K. Rogers (The Socratic Problem, 1933); and many other scholars seem to adhere to it. In spite of the fact that the arguments so far offered appear to me convincing, I may be permitted to add to them, using some results of the present book. But before proceeding to criticize Burnet, I may state that it is to Burnet that we owe our insight into the following principle of method. Plato 's evidence is the only first-rate evidence available to us; all other evidence is secondary. (Burnet has applied this principle to Xenophon; but we must apply it also to Aristophanes, whose evidence was rejected by Socrates himself, in the Apology; see under (5), below.)

(4) Burnet explains that it is his method to assume 'that Plato really meant what he said'. According to this methodological principle, Plato's 'Socrates' must be intended as a portrait of the historical Socrates. (Cp. Greek Philosophy, I, 128, 212 f., and note on p. 349/50; cp. Taylor's Socrates, 14 f , 32 f , 153.) I admit that Burnet's methodological principle is a sound starting point. But I shall try to show, under (5), that the facts are such that they soon force everybody to give it up, including Burnet and Taylor. They are forced, like all others, to interpret what Plato says. But while others become conscious of this fact, and therefore careful and critical in their interpretations, it is inevitable that those who cling to the belief that they do not interpret Plato but simply accept what he said make it impossible for themselves to examine their interpretations critically.

(5) The facts that make Burnet's methodology inapplicable and force him and all others to interpret what Plato said, are, of course, the contradictions in Plato's alleged portrait of Socrates. Even if we accept the principle that we have no better evidence than Plato's, we are forced by the internal contradictions in his writing not to take him at his word, and to give up the assumption that he 'really meant what he said'. If a witness involves himself in contradictions, then we cannot accept his testimony without interpreting it, even if he is the best witness available. I give first only three examples of such internal contradictions.

(a) The Socrates of the Apology very impressively repeats three times (18b-c; 19c-d; 23d) that he is not interested in natural philosophy (and therefore not a Pythagorean): 'I know nothing, neither much nor little, about such things', he said (19c); 'I, men of Athens, have nothing whatever to do with such things' (i.e. with speculations about nature). Socrates asserts that many who are present at the trial could testify to the truth of this statement; they have heard him speak, but neither in few nor in many words has anybody ever heard him speak about matters of natural philosophy. (Cp., 19, c-d.) On the other hand, we have (a') the Phaedo (cp. especially 108d, f, with the passages of the Apology referred to) and the Republic. In these dialogues, Socrates appears as a Pythagorean philosopher of 'nature'; so much so that both Burnet and Taylor could say that he was in fact a leading member of the Pythagorean school of thought. (Cp. Aristotle, who says of the Pythagoreans 'their discussions... are all about nature'; see Metaphysics, end of 989b.)

Now I hold that (a) and (a') flatly contradict each other; and this situation is made worse by the fact that the dramatic date of the Republic is earlier and that of the Phaedo later than that of the Apology. This makes it impossible to reconcile (a) with (a') by assuming that Socrates either gave up Pythagoreanism in the last years of his life, between the Republic and the Apology, or that he was converted to Pythagoreanism in the last month of his life.

I do not pretend that there is no way of removing this contradiction by some assumption or interpretation. Burnet and Taylor may have reasons, perhaps even good reasons, for trusting the Phaedo and the Republic rather than the Apology. (But they ought to realize that, assuming the correctness of Plato's portrait, any doubt of Socrates' veracity in the Apology makes of him one who lies for the sake of saving his skin.) Such questions, however, do not concern me at the moment. My point is rather that in accepting evidence (a') as against (a), Burnet and Taylor are forced to abandon their fundamental methodological assumption 'that Plato really meant what he said'; they must interpret.

But interpretations made unawares must be uncritical; this can be illustrated by the use made by Burnet and Taylor of Aristophanes' evidence. They hold that Aristophanes' jests would be pointless if Socrates had not been a natural philosopher. But it so happens that Socrates (I always assume, with Burnet and Taylor, that the Apology is historical) foresaw this very argument. In his apology, he warned his judges against precisely this very interpretation of Aristophanes, insisting most earnestly (Ap., 19c, ff.; see also 20c-e) that he had neither little nor much to do with natural philosophy, but simply nothing at all. Socrates felt as if he were fighting against shadows in this matter, against the shadows of the past (Ap., 18d-e); but we can now say that he was also fighting the shadows of the future. For when he challenged his fellow-citizens to come forward — those who believed Aristophanes and dared to call Socrates a liar — not one came. It was 2,300 years before some Platonists made up their minds to answer his challenge.

It may be mentioned, in this connection, that Aristophanes, a moderate anti-democrat, attacked Socrates as a 'sophist', and that most of the sophists were democrats.

(b) In the Apology (40c, ff.) Socrates takes up an agnostic attitude towards the problem of survival; (b') the Phaedo consists mainly of elaborate proofs of the immortality of the soul. This difficulty is discussed by Burnet (in his edition of the Phaedo, 1911, pp. xlviii ff.), in a way which does not convince me at all. (Cp. notes 9 to chapter 7, and 44 to the present chapter.) But whether he is right or not, his own discussion proves that he is forced to give up his methodological principle and to interpret what Plato says.

(c) The Socrates of the Apology holds that the wisdom even of the wisest consists in the realization of how little he knows, and that, accordingly, the Delphian saying 'know thyself must be interpreted as 'know thy limitations'; and he implies that the rulers, more than anybody else, ought to know their limitations. Similar views can be found in other early dialogues. But the main speakers of the Statesman and the Laws propound the doctrine that the powerful ought to be wise; and by wisdom they no longer mean a knowledge of one's limitations, but rather the initiation into the deeper mysteries of dialectic philosophy — the intuition of the world of Forms or Ideas, or the training in the Royal Science of politics. The same doctrine is expounded, in the Philebus, even as part of a discussion of the Delphian saying. (Cp. note 26 to chapter 7.)

(d) Apart from these three flagrant contradictions, I may mention two further contradictions which could easily be neglected by those who do not believe that the Seventh Letter is genuine, but which seem to me fatal to Burnet who maintains that the Seventh Letter is authentic. Burnet's view (untenable even if we neglect this letter; cp. for the whole question note 26 (5) to chapter 3) that Socrates but not Plato held the theory of Forms, is contradicted in 342a, ff, of this letter; and his view that the Republic, more especially, is Socratic, in 326a (cp. note 14 to chapter 7). Of course, all these difficulties could be removed, but only by interpretation.

(e) There are a number of similar although at the same time more subtle and more important contradictions which have been discussed at some length in previous chapters, especially in chapters 6, 7 and 8. 1 may sum up the most important of these.

(e1) The attitude towards men, especially towards the young, changes in Plato's portrait in a way which cannot be Socrates' development. Socrates died for the right to talk freely to the young, whom he loved. But in the Republic, we find him taking up an attitude of condescension and distrust which resembles the disgruntled attitude of the Athenian Stranger (admittedly Plato himself) in the Laws and the general distrust of mankind expressed so often in this work. (Cp. text to notes 17-18 to chapter 4; 18-21 to chapter 7; and 57-58 to chapter 8.)

(e2) The same sort of thing can be said about Socrates' attitude towards truth and free speech. He died for it. But in the Republic, 'Socrates' advocates lying; in the admittedly Platonic Statesman, a lie is offered as truth, and in the Laws, free thought is suppressed by the establishment of an Inquisition. (Cp. the same places as before, and furthermore notes 1- 23 and 40-41 to chapter 8; and note 55 to the present chapter.)

(e3) The Socrates of the Apology and some other dialogues is intellectually modest; in the Phaedo, he changes into a man who is assured of the truth of his metaphysical speculations. In the Republic, he is a dogmatist, adopting an attitude not far removed from the petrified authoritarianism of the Statesman and of the Laws. (Cp. text to notes 8-14 and 26 to chapter 7; 15 and 33 to chapter 8; and (c) in the present note.)

(e4) The Socrates of the Apology is an individualist; he believes in the self-sufficiency of the human individual. In the Gorgias, he is still an individualist. In the Republic, he is a radical collectivist, very similar to Plato's position in the Laws. (Cp. notes 25 and 35 to chapter 5; text to notes 26, 32, 36 and 48-54 to chapter 6 and note 45 to the present chapter.)

(e5) Again we can say similar things about Socrates' equalitarianism. In the Meno, he recognizes that a slave participates in the general intelligence of all human beings, and that he can be taught even pure mathematics; in the Gorgias, he defends the equalitarian theory of justice. But in the Republic, he despises workers and slaves and is as much opposed to equalitarianism as is Plato in the Timaeus and in the Laws. (Cp. the passages mentioned under (e 4); furthermore, notes 18 and 29 to chapter 4; note 10 to chapter 7, and note 50 (3) to chapter 8, where Timaeus, 51e, is quoted.)

(e6) The Socrates of the Apology and Crito is loyal to Athenian democracy. In the Meno and in the Gorgias (cp. note 45 to this chapter) there are suggestions of a hostile criticism; in the Republic (and, I believe, in the Menexenus), he is an open enemy of democracy; and although Plato expresses himself more cautiously in the Statesman and in the beginning of the Laws, his political tendencies in the later part of the Laws are admittedly (cp. text to note 32 to chapter 6) identical with those of the 'Socrates' of the Republic. (Cp. notes 53 and 55 to the present chapter and notes 7 and 14-18 to chapter 4.)

The last point may be further supported by the following. It seems that Socrates, in the Apology, is not merely loyal to Athenian democracy, but that he appeals directly to the democratic party by pointing out that Chaerephon, one of the most ardent of his disciples, belonged to their ranks. Chaerephon plays a decisive part in the Apology, since by approaching the Oracle, he is instrumental in Socrates' recognition of his mission in life, and thereby ultimately in Socrates' refusal to compromise with the Demos. Socrates introduces this important person by emphasizing the fact (Apol., 20e/21a) that Chaerephon was not only his friend, but also a friend of the people, whose exile he shared, and with whom he returned (presumably, he participated in the fight against the Thirty); that is to say, Socrates chooses as the main witness for his defence an ardent democrat. (There is some independent evidence for Chaerephon's sympathies, such as in Aristophanes' Clouds, 104, 501 ff. Chaerephon's appearance in the Charmides may be intended to create a kind of balance; the prominence of Critias and Charmides would otherwise create the impression of a pro-Thirty manifesto.) Why does Socrates emphasize his intimacy with a militant member of the democratic party? We cannot assume that this was merely special pleading, intended to move his judges to be more merciful: the whole spirit of his apology is against this assumption. The most likely hypothesis is that Socrates, by pointing out that he had disciples in the democratic camp, intended to deny, by implication, the charge (which also was only implied) that he was a follower of the aristocratic party and a teacher of tyrants. The spirit of the Apology excludes the assumption that Socrates was pleading friendship with a democratic leader without being truly sympathetic with the democratic cause. And the same conclusion must be drawn from the passage (Apol, 32b-d) in which he emphasizes his faith in democratic legality, and denounces the Thirty in no uncertain terms.

(6) It is simply the internal evidence of the Platonic dialogues which forces us to assume that they are not entirely historical. We must therefore attempt to interpret this evidence, by proffering theories which can be critically compared with the evidence, using the method of trial and error. Now we have very strong reason to believe that the Apology is in the main historical, for it is the only dialogue which describes a public occurrence of considerable importance and well known to a great number of people. On the other hand, we know that the Laws are Plato's latest work (apart from the doubtful Epinomis), and that they are frankly 'Platonic'. It is, therefore, the simplest assumption that the dialogues will be historical or Socratic so far as they agree with the tendencies of the Apology, and Platonic where they contradict these tendencies. (This assumption brings us practically back to the position which I have described above as the 'older solution' of the Socratic Problem.) If we consider the tendencies mentioned above under (e l) to (e 6), we find that we can easily order the most important of the dialogues in such a way that for any single one of these tendencies the similarity with the Socratic Apology decreases and that with the Platonic Laws increases. This is the series. Apology and Crito — Meno — Gorgias — Phaedo — Republic — Statesman — Timaeus — Laws.

Now the fact that this series orders the dialogues according to all the tendencies (e1) to (e6) is in itself a corroboration of the theory that we are here faced with a development in Plato's thought. But we can get quite independent evidence. 'Stylometric' investigations show that our series agrees with the chronological order in which Plato wrote the dialogues. Lastly, the series, at least up to the Timaeus, exhibits also a continually increasing interest in Pythagoreanism (and Eleaticism). This must therefore be another tendency in the development of Plato's thought.

A very different argument is this. We know, from Plato's own testimony in the Phaedo, that Antisthenes was one of Socrates' most intimate friends; and we also know that Antisthenes claimed to preserve the true Socratic creed. It is hard to believe that Antisthenes would have been a friend of the Socrates of the Republic. Thus we must find a common point of departure for the teaching of Antisthenes and Plato; and this common point we find in the Socrates of the Apology and Crito, and in some of the doctrines put into the mouth of the 'Socrates' of the Meno, Gorgias, and Phaedo.

These arguments are entirely independent of any work of Plato's which has ever been seriously doubted (as the Alcibiades I or the Theages or the Letters). They are also independent of the testimony of Xenophon. They are based solely upon the internal evidence of some of the most famous Platonic dialogues. But they agree with this secondary evidence, especially with the Seventh Letter, where in a sketch of his own mental development (325 f.), Plato even refers, unmistakably, to the key passage of the Republic as his own central discovery: 'I had to state... that... never will the race of men be saved from its plight before either the race of the genuine and true philosophers gains political power, or the ruling men in the cities become genuine philosophers, by the grace of God.' (326a; cp. note 14 to chapter 7, and (d) in this note, above.) I cannot see how it is possible to accept, with Burnet, this letter as genuine without admitting that the central doctrine of the Republic is Plato's, not Socrates'; that is to say, without giving up the fiction that Plato's portrait of Socrates in the Republic is historical. (For further evidence, cp. for instance Aristotle, Sophist. El, 183b7: 'Socrates raised questions, but gave no answers; for he confessed that he did not know.' This agrees with the Apology, but hardly with the Gorgias, and certainly not with the Phaedo or the Republic. See furthermore Aristotle's famous report on the history of the theory of Ideas, admirably discussed by Field, 0/7. cit; cp. also note 26 to chapter 3.)

(7) Against evidence of this character, the type of evidence used by Burnet and Taylor can have little weight. The following is an example. As evidence for his opinion that Plato was politically more moderate than Socrates, and that Plato's family was rather 'Whiggish', Burnet uses the argument that a member of Plato's family was named 'Demos'. (Cp. Gorg., 48 Id, 513b. — It is not, however, certain, although probable, that Demos' father Pyrilampes here mentioned is really identical with Plato's uncle and stepfather mentioned in Charm., 158a, and Parm., 126b, i.e. that Demos was a relation of Plato's.) What weight can this have, I ask, compared with the historical record of Plato's two tyrant uncles; with the extant political fragments of Critias (which remain in the family even if Burnet is right, which he hardly is, in attributing them to his grandfather; cp. Greek Phil, I, 338, note 1, with Charmides, 157e and 162d, where the poetical gifts of Critias the tyrant are alluded to); with the fact that Critias' father had belonged to the Oligarchy of the Four Hundred (Lys., 12, 66); and with Plato's own writings which combine family pride with not only anti-democratic but even anti-Athenian tendencies? (Cp. the eulogy, in Timaeus, 20a, of an enemy of Athens like Hermocrates of Sicily, father-in-law of the older Dionysius.) The purpose behind Burnet's argument is, of course, to strengthen the theory that the Republic is Socratic. Another example of bad method may be taken from Taylor, who argues (Socrates, note 2 on p. 148 f.; cp. also p. 162) in favour of the view that the Phaedo is Socratic (cp. my note 9 to chapter 7):

'In the Phaedo [72e]... the doctrine that "learning is just recognition" is expressly said by Simmias' (this is a slip of Taylor's pen; the speaker is Cebes) 'speaking to Socrates, to be "the doctrine you are so constantly repeating". Unless we are willing to regard the Phaedo as a gigantic and unpardonable mystification, this seems to me proof that the theory really belongs to Socrates.' (For a similar argument, see Burnet's edition of the Phaedo, p. xii, end of chapter ii.) On this I wish to make the following comments: (a) It is here assumed that Plato considered himself a historian when writing this passage, for otherwise his statement would not be 'a gigantic and unpardonable mystification'; in other words, the most questionable and the most central point of the theory is assumed, (b) But even if Plato had considered himself a historian (I do not think that he did), the expression 'a gigantic... etc' seems to be too strong. Taylor, not Plato, puts 'you' in italics. Plato might only have wished to indicate that he is going to assume that the readers of the dialogue are acquainted with this theory. Or he might have intended to refer to the Meno, and thus to himself (This last explanation is I think almost certainly true, in view Phaedo, 73a, f, with the allusion to diagrams.) Or his pen might have slipped, for some reason or other. Such things are bound to occur, even to historians. Burnet, for example, has to explain Socrates' Pythagoreanism; to do this he makes Parmenides a Pythagorean rather than a pupil of Xenophanes, of whom he writes (Greek Philosophy, I, 64): 'the story that he founded the Eleatic school seems to be derived from a playful remark of Plato's which would also prove Homer to have been a Heraclitean.' To this, Burnet adds the footnote: 'Plato, Soph., 242d. See E. Gr. Ph. , p. 140'. Now I believe that this statement of a historian clearly implies four things, (1) that the passage of Plato which refers to Xenophanes is playful, i.e. not meant seriously, (2) that this playfulness manifests itself in the reference to Homer, that is, (3) by remarking that he was a Heraclitean, which would, of course, be a very playful remark since Homer lived long before Heraclitus, and (4) that there is no other serious evidence connecting Xenophanes with the Eleatic School. But none of these four implications can be upheld. For we find, (1) that the passage in the Sophist (242d) which refers to Xenophanes is not playful, but that it is recommended by Burnet himself, in the methodological appendix to his Early Greek Philosophy , as important and as full of valuable historical information; (2) that it contains no reference at all to Homer; and (3) that another passage which contains this reference (Theaet., 179d/e; cp. 152d/e, 160d) with which Burnet mistakenly identified Sophist, 242d, in Greek Philosophy , I (the mistake is not made in his Early Greek Philosophy2), does not refer to Xenophanes; nor does it call Homer a Heraclitean, but it says the opposite, namely, that some of Heraclitus' ideas are as old as Homer (which is, of course, much less playful); and (4), there is a clear and important passage in Theophrastus (Phys. op., fragm. 8 = Simplicius, Phys., 28, 4) ascribing to Xenophanes a number of opinions which we know Parmenides shared with him and linking him with Parmenides — to say nothing of D.L. ix, 21-3, or of Timaeus ap. Clement Strom 1, 64, 2. This heap of misunderstandings, misinterpretations, misquotations, and misleading omissions (for the created myth, see Kirk and Raven, p. 265) can be found in one single historical remark of a truly great historian such as Burnet. From this we must learn that such things do happen, even to the best of historians: all men are fallible. (A more serious example of this kind of fallibility is the one discussed in note 26 (5) to chapter 3.)

(8) The chronological order of those Platonic dialogues which play a role in these arguments is here assumed to be nearly the same as that of the stylometric list of Lutoslawski (The Origin and Growth of Plato 's Logic, 1897). A list of those dialogues which play a role in the text of this book will be found in note 5 to chapter 3. It is drawn up in such a way that there is more uncertainty of date within each group than between the groups. A minor deviation from the stylometric list is the position of the Euthyphro which for reasons of its content (discussed in text to note 60 to this chapter) appears to me to be probably later than the Crito; but this point is of little importance. (Cp. also note 47 to this chapter.)

57. There is a famous and rather puzzling passage in the Second Letter (314c): 'There is no writing of Plato nor will there ever be. What goes by his name really belongs to Socrates turned young and handsome.' The most likely solution of this puzzle is that the passage, if not the whole letter, is spurious. (Cp. Field, Plato and His Contemporaries, 200 f , where he gives an admirable summary of the reasons for suspecting the letter, and especially the passages '312d-313c and possibly down to 314c'; concerning 314c, an additional reason is, perhaps, that the forger might have intended to allude to, or to give his interpretation of, a somewhat similar remark in the Seventh Letter, 341b/c, quoted in note 32 to chapter 8.) But if for a moment we assume with Burnet (Greek Philosophy , I, 212) that the passage is genuine, then the remark 'turned young and handsome' certainly raises a problem, especially as it cannot be taken literally since Socrates is presented in all the Platonic dialogues as old and ugly (the only exception is the Parmenides, where he is hardly handsome, although still young). If genuine, the puzzling remark would mean that Plato quite intentionally gave an idealized and not an historical account of Socrates; and it would fit our interpretation quite well to see that Plato was indeed conscious of re-interpreting Socrates as a young and handsome aristocrat who is, of course, Plato himself (Cp. also note 11 (2) to chapter 4, note 20 (1) to chapter 6, and note 50 (3) to chapter 8.)

58. I am quoting from the first paragraph of Davies' and Vaughan's introduction to their translation of the Republic. Cp. Crossman, Plato To-Day, 96.

59. (1) The 'division' or 'split' in Plato's soul is one of the most outstanding impressions of his work, and especially of the Republic. Only a man who had to struggle hard to uphold his self-control or the rule of his reason over his animal instincts could emphasize this point as much as Plato did; cp. the passages referred to in note 34 to chapter 5, especially the story of the beast in man (Rep., 588c), which is probably of Orphic origin, and in notes 15 (1)-(4), 17, and 19 to chapter 3, which not only show an astonishing similarity with psycho- analytical doctrines, but might also be claimed to exhibit strong symptoms of repression. (See also the beginning of Book IX, 571d and 575a, which sound like an exposition of the doctrine of the Oedipus Complex. On Plato's attitude to his mother, some light is perhaps thrown by Republic, 548e-549d, especially in view of the fact that in 548e his brother Glaucon is identified with the son in question.) *An excellent statement of the conflicts in Plato, and an attempt at a psychological analysis of his will to power, are made by H. Kelsen in The American Imago, vol. 3, 1942, pp. 1-110, and Werner File, The Platonic Legend, 1939.*

Those Platonists who are not prepared to admit that from Plato's longing and clamouring for unity and harmony and unisonity, we may conclude that he was himself disunited and disharmonious, may be reminded that this way of arguing was invented by Plato. (Cp. Symposium, 200a, f, where Socrates argues that it is a necessary and not a probable inference that he who loves or desires does not possess what he loves and desires.)

What I have called Plato's political theory of the soul (see also text to note 32 to chapter 5), i.e. the division of the soul according to the class-divided society, has long remained the basis of most psychologies. It is the basis of psycho-analysis too. According to Freud's theory, what Plato had called the ruling part of the soul tries to uphold its tyranny by a 'censorship', while the rebellious proletarian animal-instincts, which correspond to the social underworld, really exercise a hidden dictatorship; for they determine the policy of the apparent ruler. — Since Heraclitus' 'flux' and 'war', the realm of social experience has strongly influenced the theories, metaphors, and symbols by which we interpret the physical world around us (and ourselves) to ourselves. I mention only Darwin's adoption, under the influence of Malthus, of the theory of social competition.

(2) A remark may be added here on mysticism, in its relation to the closed and open society, and to the strain of civilization.

As McTaggart has shown, in his excellent study Mysticism (see his Philosophical Studies, edited by S. V. Keeling, 1934, esp. pp. 47 ff. ), the fundamental ideas of mysticism are two: (a) the doctrine of the mystic union, i.e. the assertion that there is a greater unity in the world of realities than that which we recognize in the world of ordinary experience, and (b) the doctrine of the mystic intuition, i.e. the assertion that there is a way of knowing which 'brings the known into closer and more direct relation with what is known' than is the relation between the knowing subject and the known object in ordinary experience. McTaggart rightly asserts (p. 48) that 'of these two characteristics the mystic unity is the more fundamental', since the mystic intuition is 'an example of the mystic unity'. We may add that a third characteristic, less fundamental still, is (c) the mystic love, which is an example of mystic unity and mystic intuition.

Now it is interesting (and this has not been seen by McTaggart) that in the history of Greek Philosophy, the doctrine of the mystic unity was first clearly asserted by Parmenides in his hohstic doctrine of the one (cp. note 41 to the present chapter); next by Plato, who added an elaborate doctrine of mystic intuition and communion with the divine (cp. chapter 8), of which doctrine there are just the very first beginnings in Parmenides; next by Aristotle, e.g. m De Anima, 425b30 f: 'The actual hearing and the actual sound are merged into one'; cp. Rep. 507c, ff., 430a20, and 431al: 'Actual knowledge is identical with its object' (see also De Anima, 404b16, and Metaphysics, 1072b20 and 1075a2, and cp. Plato's Timaeus, 45b-c, 47a-d; Meno, 81a, ff.; Phaedo, 79d); and next by the Neo-Platonists, who elaborated the doctrine of the mystic love, of which only the beginning can be found in Plato (for example, in his doctrine, 475 ff., that the philosopher loves truth, which is closely connected with the doctrines of hohsm and the philosopher's communion with the divine truth).

In view of these facts and of our historical analysis, we are led to interpret mysticism as one of the typical reactions to the breakdown of the closed society; a reaction which, in its origin, was directed against the open society, and which may be described as an escape into the dream of a paradise in which the tribal unity reveals itself as the unchanging reality. This interpretation is in direct conflict with that of Bergson in his Two Sources of Morality and Religion; for Bergson asserts that it is mysticism which makes the leap from the closed to the open society.

* But it must of course be admitted (as Jacob Viner very kindly pointed out to me in a letter) that mysticism is versatile enough to work in any political direction; and even among the apostles of the open society, mystics and mysticism have their representatives. It is the mystic inspiration of a better, a less divided, world which undoubtedly inspired not only Plato, but also Socrates.*

It may be remarked that in the nineteenth century, especially in Hegel and Bergson, we find an evolutionary mysticism, which, by extolling change, seems to stand in direct opposition to Parmenides' and Plato's hatred of change. And yet, the underlying experience of these two forms of mysticism seems to be the same, as shown by the fact that an over-emphasis on change is common to both. Both are reactions to the frightening experience of social change: the one combined with the hope that change may be arrested; the other with a somewhat hysterical (and undoubtedly ambivalent) acceptance of change as real, essential and welcome. — Cp. also notes 32-33 to chapter 11, 36 to chapter 12, and 4, 6, 29, 32 and 58 to chapter 24.

60. The Euthyphro, an early dialogue, is usually interpreted as an unsuccessful attempt of Socrates to define piety. Euthyphro himself is the caricature of a popular 'pietist' who knows exactly what the gods wish. To Socrates' question 'What is piety and what is impiety?' he is made to answer: 'Piety is acting as I do! That is to say, prosecuting any one guilty of murder, sacrilege, or of any similar crime, whether he be your father or your mother while not to prosecute them is impiety' (5, d/e). Euthyphro is presented as prosecuting his father for having murdered a serf (According to the evidence quoted by Grote, Plato, I, note to p. 312, every citizen was bound by Attic law to prosecute in such cases.)

61. Menexenus, 235b. Cp. note 35 to this chapter, and the end of note 19 to chapter 6.

62. The claim that if you want security you must give up liberty has become a mainstay of the revolt against freedom. But nothing is less true. There is, of course, no absolute security in life. But what security can be attained depends on our own watchfulness, enforced by institutions to help us watch — i.e. by democratic institutions which are devised (using Platonic language) to enable the herd to watch, and to judge, their watch-dogs.

63. With the 'variations' and 'irregularities', cp. Republic, 547a, quoted in the text to notes 39 and 40 to chapter 5. Plato's obsession with the problems of propagation and birth control may perhaps be explained in part by the fact that he understood the implications of population growth. Indeed (cp. text to note 7 to this chapter) the 'Fall', the loss of the tribal paradise, is caused by a 'natural' or 'original' fault of man, as it were: by a maladjustment in his natural rate of breeding. Cp. also notes 39 (3) to ch. 5, and 34 to ch. 4. With the next quotation further below in this paragraph, cp. Republic, 566e, and text to note 20 to chapter 4. — Grossman, whose treatment of the period of tyranny in Greek history is excellent (cp. Plato To-Day, 27-30), writes: 'Thus it was the tyrants who really created the Greek State. They broke down the old tribal organization of primitive aristocracy...' (op. cit., 29). This explains why Plato hated tyranny, perhaps even more than freedom: cp. Republic, 577c. — (See, however, note 69 to this chapter.) His passages on tyranny, especially 565-568, are a brilliant sociological analysis of a consistent power-politics. I should like to call it the first attempt towards a logic of power. (I chose this term in analogy to F. A. von Hayek's use of the term logic of choice for the pure economic theory.) — The logic of power is fairly simple, and has often been applied in a masterly way. The opposite kind of politics is much more difficult; partly because the logic of anti-power politics, i.e. the logic of freedom, is hardly understood yet.

64. It is well known that most of Plato's political proposals, including the proposed communism of women and children, were 'in the air' in the Periclean period. Cp. the excellent summary in Adam's edition of the Republic, vol. I, p. 354 f , *and A. D. Winspear, The Genesis of Plato's Thought, 1940.*

66. Cp. the effect which Glaucon's presentation of Lycophron's theory had on Carneades (cp. note 54 to chapter 6), and later, on Hobbes. The professed 'a-morality' of so many Marxists is also a case in point. Leftists frequently believe in their own immorality. (This, although not much to the point, is sometimes more modest and more pleasant than the dogmatic self- righteousness of many reactionary moralists.)

67. Money is one of the symbols as well as one of the difficulties of the open society. There is no doubt that we have not yet mastered the rational control of its use; its greatest misuse is that it can buy political power. (The most direct form of this misuse is the institution of the slave-market; but just this institution is defended in Republic, 563b; cp. note 17 to chapter 4; and in the Laws, Plato is not opposed to the political influence of wealth; cp. note 20 (1) to chapter 6.) From the point of view of an individualistic society, money is fairly important. It is part of the institution of the (partially) free market, which gives the consumer some measure of control over production. Without some such institution, the producer may control the market to such a degree that he ceases to produce for the sake of consumption, while the consumer consumes largely for the sake of production. — The sometimes glaring misuse of money has made us rather sensitive, and Plato's opposition between money and friendship is only the first of many conscious or unconscious attempts to utilize these sentiments for the purpose of political propaganda.

68. The group-spirit of tribalism is, of course, not entirely lost. It manifests itself, for instance, in the most valuable experiences of friendship and comradeship; also, in youthful tribalistic movements like the boy-scouts (or the German Youth Movement), and in certain clubs and adult societies, as described, for instance, by Sinclair Lewis in Babbitt. The importance of this perhaps most universal of all emotional and aesthetic experiences must not be underrated. Nearly all social movements, totalitarian as well as humanitarian, are influenced by it. It plays an important role in war, and is one of the most powerful weapons of the revolt against freedom; admittedly also in peace, and in revolts against tyranny, but in these cases its humanitarianism is often endangered by its romantic tendencies. — conscious and not unsuccessful attempt to revive it for the purpose of arresting society and of perpetuating a class rule seems to have been the English Public School System. ('No one can grow up to be a good man unless his earliest years were given to noble games' is its motto, taken from Republic, 558b.)

Another product and symptom of the loss of the tribalistic group-spirit is, of course, Plato's emphasis upon the analogy between politics and medicine (cp. chapter 8, especially note 4), an emphasis which expresses the feeling that the body of society is sick, i.e. the feeling of strain, of drift. 'From the time of Plato on, the minds of political philosophers seem to have recurred to this comparison between medicine and politics,' says G. E. G. Catlin (A Study of the Principles of Politics, 1930, note to 458, where Thomas Aquinas, G. Santayana, and Dean Inge are quoted to support his statement; cp. also the quotations in op. cit, note to 37, from Mill's Logic). Catlin also speaks most characteristically (op. cit., 459) of 'harmony' and of the 'desire for protection, whether assured by the mother or by society'. (Cp. also note 18 to chapter 5.)

69. Cp. chapter 7 (note 24 and text; see Athen., XI, 508) for the names of nine such disciples of Plato (including the younger Dionysius and Dio). I suppose that Plato's repeated insistence upon the use, not only of force, but of 'persuasion and force' (cp. Laws, 722b, and notes 5, 10, and 18 to chapter 8), was meant as a criticism of the tactics of the Thirty, whose propaganda was indeed primitive. But this would imply that Plato was well aware of Pareto's recipe for utilizing sentiments instead of fighting them. That Plato's friend Dio (cp. note 25 to chapter 7) ruled Syracuse as a tyrant is admitted even by Meyer in his defence of Dio whose fate he explains, in spite of his admiration for Plato as a politician, by pointing out the 'gulf between' (the Platonic) 'theory and practice' (op. cit, V, 999). Meyer says of Dio ( he. cit.), 'The ideal king had become, externally, indistinguishable from the contemptible tyrant.' But he believes that, internally as it were, Dio remained an idealist, and that he suffered deeply when political necessity forced murder (especially that of his ally Heraclides) and similar measures upon him. I think, however, that Dio acted according to Plato's theory; a theory which, by the logic of power, drove Plato in the Laws to admit even the goodness of tyranny (709e, ff.; at the same place, there may also be a suggestion that the debacle of the Thirty was due to their great number: Critias alone would have been all right).

70. The tribal paradise is, of course, a myth (although some primitive people, most of all the Eskimos, seem to be happy enough). There may have been no sense of drift in the closed society, but there is ample evidence of other forms of fear — fear of demoniac powers behind nature. The attempt to revive this fear, and to use it against the intellectuals, the scientists, etc., characterizes many late manifestations of the revolt against freedom. It is to the credit of Plato, the disciple of Socrates, that it never occurred to him to present his enemies as the offspring of the sinister demons of darkness. In this point, he remained enlightened. He had little inclination to idealize the evil which was to him simply debased, or degenerate, or impoverished goodness. (Only in one passage in the Laws, 896e and 898c, there is what may be a suggestion of an abstract idealization of the evil.)

71. A final note may be added here in connection with my remark on the return to the beasts. Since the intrusion of Darwinism into the field of human problems (an intrusion for which Darwin should not be blamed) there have been many 'social zoologists' who have proved that the human race is bound to degenerate physically, because insufficient physical competition, and the possibility of protecting the body by the efforts of the mind, prevent natural selection from acting upon our bodies. The first to formulate this idea (not that he believed in it) was Samuel Butler, who wrote: 'The one serious danger which this writer' (an Erewhonian writer) 'apprehended was that the machines' (and, we may add, civilization in general) 'would so... lessen the severity of competition, that many persons of inferior physique would escape detection and transmit their inferiority to their descendants.' (Erewhon, 1872; cp. Everyman's edition, p. 161.) The first as far as I know to write a bulky volume on this theme was W. Schallmayer (cp. note 65 to chapter 12), one of the founders of modem racialism. In fact, Butler's theory has been continually rediscovered (especially by 'biological naturalists' in the sense of chapter 5, above). According to some modem writers (see, for example, G. H. Estabrooks, Man: The Mechanical Misfit, 1941), man made the decisive mistake when he became civilized, and especially when he began to help the weak; before this, he was an almost perfect man-beast; but civilization, with its artificial methods of protecting the weak, leads to degeneration, and therefore must ultimately destroy itself In reply to such arguments, we should, I think, first admit that man is likely to disappear one day from this world; but we should add that this is also true of even the most perfect beasts, to say nothing of those which are only 'almost perfect'. The theory that the human race might live a little longer if it had not made the fatal mistake of helping the weak is most questionable; but even if it were true — is mere length of survival of the race really all we want? Or is the almost perfect man-beast so eminently valuable that we should prefer a prolongation of his existence (he did exist for quite a long time, anyway) to our experiment of helping the weak?

Mankind, I believe, has not done so badly. In spite of the treason of some of its intellectual leaders, in spite of the stupefying effects of Platonic methods in education and the devastating results of propaganda, there have been some surprising successes. Many weak men have been helped, and for nearly a hundred years slavery has been practically abolished. Some say it will soon be re-introduced. I feel more optimistic; and, after all, it will depend on ourselves. But even if all this should be lost again, and even if we had to return to the almost perfect man-beast, this would not alter the fact that once upon a time (even if the time was short), slavery did disappear from the face of the earth. This achievement and its memory may, I believe, compensate some of us for all our misfits, mechanical or otherwise; and it may even compensate some of us for the fatal mistake made by our forefathers when they missed the golden opportunity of arresting all change — of returning to the cage of the closed society and establishing, for ever and ever, a perfect zoo of almost perfect monkeys.

1. That Aristotle's criticism of Plato is very frequently, and in important places, unmerited, has been admitted by many students of the history of philosophy. It is one of the few points in which even the admirers of Aristotle find it difficult to defend him, since usually they are admirers of Plato as well. Zeller, to quote just one example, comments (cp. Aristotle and the Earlier Peripatetics, English translation by Costelloe and Muirhead, 1897, II, 261, n. 2), upon the distribution of land in Aristotle's Best State: 'There is a similar plan in Plato's Laws, 745c seqq.; Aristotle, however, in Politics 1265b24 considers Plato's arrangement, merely on account of a trifling difference, highly objectionable.' A similar remark is made by G. Grote, Aristotle (Ch. XIV, end of second paragraph). In view of many criticisms of Plato which strongly suggest that envy of Plato's originality is part of his motive, Aristotle's much-admired solemn assurance (Nicomachean Ethics, I, 6, 1) that the sacred duty of giving preference to truth forces him to sacrifice even what is most dear to him, namely, his love for Plato, sounds to me somewhat hypocritical.

G. C. Field (in Plato and His Contemporaries, 114 f ) defends Plato and Aristotle against the 'reproach... that, with the possibility, and, in the case of the latter, the actuality of this' (i.e. the Macedonian conquest) 'before their eyes, they... say nothing of these new developments'. But Field's defence (perhaps directed against Gomperz) is unsuccessful, in spite of his strong comments upon those who make such a reproach. (Field says: 'this criticism betrays... a singular lack of understanding.') Of course, it is correct to claim, as Field does, 'that a hegemony like that exercised by Macedon... was no new thing'; but Macedon was in Plato's eyes at least half-barbarian and therefore a natural enemy. Field is also right in saying that 'the destruction of independence by Macedon' was not a complete one; but did Plato or Aristotle foresee that it was not to become complete? I believe that a defence like Field's cannot possibly succeed, simply because it would have to prove too much; namely, that the significance of Macedon 's threat could not have been clear, at the time, to any observer; but this is disproved, of course, by the example of Demosthenes. The question is: why did Plato, who like Isocrates had taken some interest in pan-Hellenic nationalism (cp. notes 48-50 to chapter S,Rep., 470, and the Eighth Letter, 353e, which Field claims to be 'certainly genuine') and who was apprehensive of a 'Phoenician and Oscan' threat to Syracuse, why did he ignore Macedon's threat to Athens? A likely reply to the corresponding question concerning Aristotle is: because he belonged to the pro- Macedonian party. A reply in Plato's case is suggested by Zeller (op. cit., II, 41) in his defence of Aristotle's right to support Macedon: 'So satisfied was Plato of the intolerable character of the existing political position that he advocated sweeping changes.' ('Plato's follower', Zeller continues, referring to Aristotle, 'could the less evade the same convictions, since he had a keener insight into men and things... ') In other words, the answer might be that Plato's hatred of Athenian democracy exceeded so much even his pan-Hellenic nationalism that he was, like Isocrates, looking forward to the Macedonian conquest.

3. This and the following three quotations are from Aristotle's Politics, 1254b-1255a; 1254a; 1255a; 1260a.— See also: 1252a, f (I, 2, 2-5); 1253b, ff (I, 4, 386, and especially I, 5); 1313b (V, 11, 11). Furthermore: Metaphysics, 1075a, where freemen and slaves are also opposed 'by nature'. But we find also the passage: 'Some slaves have the souls of freemen, and others their bodies' (Politics, 1254b). Cp. with Plato's Timaeus, 51e, quoted in note 50 (2), to chapter 8. — For a trifling mitigation, and a typically 'balanced judgement' of Plato's Laws, see Politics, 1260b: 'Those' (this is a somewhat typical Aristotelian way of referring to Plato) 'are wrong who forbid us even to converse with slaves and say that we should only use the language of command; for slaves must be admonished' (Plato had said, in Laws, 777e, that they should not be admonished) 'even more than children.' Zeller, in his long list of the personal virtues of Aristotle (op. cit., I, 44), mentions his 'nobility of principles' and his 'benevolence to slaves'. I cannot help remembering the perhaps less noble but certainly more benevolent principle put forward much earlier by Alcidamas and Lycophron, namely, that there should be no slaves at all. W. D. Ross (Aristotle, 2nd ed., 1930, pp. 241 ff.) defends Aristotle's attitude towards slavery by saying: 'Where to us he seems reactionary, he may have seemed revolutionary to them', viz., to his contemporaries. In support of this view, Ross mentions Aristotle's doctrine that Greek should not enslave Greek. But this doctrine was hardly very revolutionary since Plato had taught it, probably half a century before Aristotle. And that Aristotle's views were indeed reactionary can be best seen from the fact that he repeatedly finds it necessary to defend them against the doctrine that no man is a slave by nature, and further from his own testimony to the anti-slavery tendencies of the Athenian democracy.

An excellent statement on Aristotle's Politics can be found in the beginning of Chapter XIV of G. Grote's Aristotle, from which I quote a few sentences: 'The scheme... of government proposed by Aristotle, in the two last books of his Politics, as representing his own ideas of something like perfection, is evidently founded upon the Republic of Plato: from whom he differs in the important circumstance of not admitting either community of property or community of wives and children. Each of these philosophers recognizes one separate class of inhabitants, relieved from all private toil and all money-getting employments, and constituting exclusively the citizens of the commonwealth. This small class is in effect the city — the commonwealth: the remaining inhabitants are not a part of the commonwealth, they are only appendages to it — indispensable indeed, but still appendages, in the same manner as slaves or cattle.' Grote recognizes that Aristotle's Best State, where it deviates from the Republic, largely copies Plato's Laws. Aristotle's dependence upon Plato is prominent even where he expresses his acquiescence in the victory of democracy; cp. especially Politics, III, 15; 11-13; 1286b (a parallel passage is IV, 13; 10; 1297b). The passage ends by saying of democracy: 'No other form of government appears to be possible any longer'; but this result is reached by an argument that follows very closely Plato's story of the decline and fall of the state in Books VIII-IX of the Republic; and this in spite of the fact that Aristotle criticizes Plato's story severely (for instance in V, 12; 1316a, f).

4. Aristotle's use of the word 'banausic' in the sense of 'professional' or 'money earning' is clearly shown in Politics, VIII, 6, 3 ff. (1340b) and especially 15 f (1341b). Every professional, for example a flute player, and of course every artisan or labourer, is 'banausic', that is to say, not a free man, not a citizen, even though he is not a real slave; the status of a 'banausic' man is one of 'partial or limited slavery' (Politics, I, 14; 13; 1260a/b). The word 'banausos' derives, I gather, from a pre-Hellenic word for 'fire-worker'. Used as an attribute it means that a man's origin and caste 'disqualify him from prowess in the field'. (Cp. Greenidge, quoted by Adam in his edition of the Republic, note to 495e30.) It may be translated by 'low-caste', 'cringing', 'degrading', or in some contexts by 'upstart'. Plato used the word in the same sense as Aristotle. In the (741e and 743d), the term 'banausia' is used to describe the depraved state of a man who makes money by means other than the hereditary possession of land. See also the Republic, 495e and 590c. But if we remember the tradition that Socrates was a mason; and Xenophon's story (Mem. II, 7); and Antisthenes' praise of hard work; and the attitude of the Cynics; then it seems unlikely that Socrates agreed with the aristocratic prejudice that money earning must be degrading. (The Oxford English Dictionary proposes to render 'banausic' as 'merely mechanical, proper to a mechanic', and quotes Grote, Eth. Fragm., vi, 227 = Aristotle, 2nd edn, 1880, p. 545; but this rendering is much too narrow, and Grote's passage does not justify this interpretation, which may originally rest upon a misunderstanding of Plutarch. It is interesting that in Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream the term 'mere mechanicals' is used precisely in the sense of 'banausic' men; and this use might well be connected with a passage on Archimedes in North's translation of the Life of Marcellus.)

In Mind, vol. 47, there is an interesting discussion between A. E. Taylor and F. M. Cornford, in which the former (pp. 197 ff.) defends his view that Plato, when speaking of 'the god' in a certain passage of the Timaeus, may have had in mind a 'peasant cultivator' who 'serves' by bodily labour; a view which is, I think most convincingly, criticized by Cornford (pp. 329 ff.). Plato's attitude towards all 'banausic' work, and especially manual labour, bears on this problem; and when (p. 198, note) Taylor uses the argument that Plato compares his gods 'with shepherds or sheep-dogs in charge of a flock of sheep' (Laws, 901e, 907a), then we could point out that the activities of nomads and hunters are quite consistently considered by Plato as noble or even divine; but the sedentary 'peasant cultivator' is banausic and depraved. Cp. note 32 to chapter 4, and text.

5. The two passages that follow are from Politics (1337b, 4 and 5).

6. The 1939 edition of the Pocket Oxford Dictionary still says: 'liberal... (of education) fit for a gentleman, of a general literary rather than technical kind'. This shows most clearly the everlasting power of Aristotle's influence.

I admit that there is a serious problem of a professional education, that of narrow- mindedness. But I do not believe that a 'literary' education is the remedy; for it may create its own peculiar kind of narrow-mindedness, its peculiar snobbery. And in our day no man should be considered educated if he does not take an interest in science. The usual defence that an interest in electricity or stratigraphy need not be more enlightening than an interest in human affairs only betrays a complete lack of understanding of human affairs. For science is not merely a collection of facts about electricity, etc.; it is one of the most important spiritual movements of our day. Anybody who does not attempt to acquire an understanding of this movement cuts himself off from the most remarkable development in the history of human affairs. Our so-called Arts Faculties, based upon the theory that by means of a literary and historical education they introduce the student into the spiritual life of man, have therefore become obsolete in their present form. There can be no history of man which excludes a history of his intellectual struggles and achievements; and there can be no history of ideas which excludes the history of scientific ideas. But literary education has an even more serious aspect. Not only does it fail to educate the student, who is often to become a teacher, to an understanding of the greatest spiritual movement of his own day, but it also often fails to educate him to intellectual honesty. Only if the student experiences how easy it is to err, and how hard to make even a small advance in the field of knowledge, only then can he obtain a feeling for the standards of intellectual honesty, a respect for truth, and a disregard of authority and bumptiousness. But nothing is more necessary to-day than the spread of these modest intellectual virtues. 'The mental power', T. H. Huxley wrote in A Liberal Education, 'which will be of most importance in your... life will be the power of seeing things as they are without regard to authority... But at school and at college, you shall know of no source of truth but authority.' I admit that, unfortunately, this is true also of many courses in science, which by some teachers is still treated as if it was a 'body of knowledge', as the ancient phrase goes. But this idea will one day, I hope, disappear; for science can be taught as a fascinating part of human history — as a quickly developing growth of bold hypotheses, controlled by experiment, and by criticism. Taught in this way, as a part of the history of 'natural philosophy', and of the history of problems and of ideas, it could become the basis of a new liberal University education; of one whose aim, where it cannot produce experts, will be to produce at least men who can distinguish between a charlatan and an expert. This modest and liberal aim will be far beyond anything that our Arts Faculties nowadays achieve.

7. Politics, VIII, 3, 2 (1337b): 'I must repeat over and again, that the first principle of all action is leisure.' Previously, in VII, 15, 1 f (1334a), we read: 'Since the end of individuals and of states is the same... they should both contain the virtues of leisure... For the proverb says truly, "There is no leisure for slaves".' Cp. also the reference in note 9 to this section, and Metaphysics, 1072b23.

Concerning Aristotle's 'admiration and deference for the leisured classes', cp. for example the following passage from the Politics, IV (VII), 8, 4-5 (1293b/1294a): 'Birth and education as a rule go together with wealth... The rich are already in possession of those advantages the want of which is a temptation to crime, and hence they are called noblemen and gentlemen. Now it appears to be impossible that a state should be badly governed if the best citizens rule... ' Aristotle, however, not only admires the rich, but is also, like Plato, a racialist (cp. op. cit.. III, 13, 2-3, 1283a): 'The nobly born are citizens in a truer sense of the word than the low born... Those who come from better ancestors are likely to be better men, for nobility is excellence of race.'

9. Cp. Nicomachean Ethics, X, 7, 6. The Aristotelian phrase, 'the good life', seems to have caught the imagination of many modern admirers who associate with this phrase something like a 'good life' in the Christian sense — a life devoted to help, service, and the quest for the 'higher values'. But this interpretation is the result of a mistaken idealization of Aristotle's intentions; Aristotle was exclusively concerned with the 'good life' of feudal gentlemen, and this 'good life' he did not envisage as a life of good deeds, but as a life of refined leisure, spent in the pleasant company of friends who are equally well situated.

10. I do not think that even the term 'vulgarization' would be too strong, considering that to Aristotle himself 'professional' means 'vulgar', and considering that he certainly made a profession of Platonic philosophy. Besides, he made it dull, as even Zeller admits in the midst of his eulogy (op. cit., I, 46): 'He cannot inspire us... at all in the same way as Plato does. His work is drier, more professional... than Plato's has been.'

11. Plato presented in the Timaeus (42a f, 90e f, and especially 91d f; see note 6 (7) to chapter 3) a general theory of the origin of species by way of degeneration, down from the Gods and the first man. Man first degenerates into a woman, then further to the higher and lower animals and to the plants. It is, as Gomperz says (Greek Thinkers, book 5, ch. 19, § 3; I am quoting from the German edition, vol. 11, 482), 'a theory of descent in the literal sense or a theory of devolution, as opposed to the modern theory of evolution which, since it assumes an ascending sequence, might be called a theory of ascent.' Plato's mythical and possibly semi-ironical presentation of this theory of descent by degeneration makes use of the Orphic and Pythagorean theory of the transmigration of the soul. All this (and the important fact that evolutionary theories which made the lower forms precede the higher were in vogue at least as early as Empedocles) must be remembered when we hear from Aristotle that Speusippus, together with certain Pythagoreans, believed in an evolutionary theory according to which the best and most divine, which are first in rank, come last in the chronological order of development. Aristotle speaks (Met., 1072b30) of 'those who suppose, with the Pythagoreans and Speusippus, that supreme beauty and goodness are not present in the beginning'. From this passage we may conclude, perhaps, that some Pythagoreans had used the myth of transmigration (possibly under the influence of Xenophanes) as the vehicle of a 'theory of ascent'. This surmise is supported by Aristotle, who says (Met., 1091a34): 'The mythologists seem to agree with some thinkers of the present day' (an allusion, I suppose, to Speusippus) '... who say that the good as well as the beautiful make their appearance in nature only after nature has made some progress.' It also seems as if Speusippus had taught that the world will in the course of its development become a Parmenidian Owe — an organized and fully harmonious whole. (Cp. Met., 1092314, where a thinker who maintains that the more perfect always comes from the imperfect, is quoted as saying that 'the One itself does not yet exist'; cp. also Met, 1091a11.) Aristotle himself consistently expresses, at the places quoted, his opposition to these 'theories of ascent'. His argument is that it is a complete man that produces man, and that the incomplete seed is not prior to man. In view of this attitude, Zeller can hardly be right in attributing to Aristotle what is practically the Speusippian theory. (Cp. Zeller, Aristotle, etc., vol. II, 28 f. A similar interpretation is propounded by H. F. Osborn, From the Greeks to Darwin, 1908, pp. 48-56.) We may have to accept Gomperz's interpretation, according to which Aristotle taught the eternity and invariability of the human species and at least of the higher animals. Thus his morphological orders must be interpreted as neither chronological nor genealogical. (Cp. Greek Thinkers, book 6, ch. 11, § 10, and especially ch. 13, §§ 6 f., and the notes to these passages.) But there remains, of course, the possibility that Aristotle was inconsistent in this point, as he was in many others, and that his arguments against Speusippus are due to his wish to assert his independence. See also note 6 (7) to chapter 3, and notes 2 and 4 to chapter 4.

12. Aristotle's First Mover, that is, God, is prior in time (though he is eternal) and has the predicate of goodness. For the evidence concerning the identification of formal and final cause mentioned in this paragraph, see note 1 5 to this chapter.

13. For Plato's biological teleology see Timaeus, 73a-76e. Gomperz comments rightly (Greek Thinkers, book 5, ch. 19, § 7; German edn, vol. II, 495 f ) that Plato's teleology is only understandable if we remember that 'animals are degenerate men, and that their organization may therefore exhibit purposes which were originally only the ends of man'.

14. For Plato's version of the theory of the natural places, see Timaeus, 60b-63a, and especially 63b f. Aristotle adopts the theory with only minor changes and explains like Plato the 'lightness' and 'heaviness' of bodies by the 'upward' and 'downward' direction of their natural movements towards their natural places; cp. for instance Physics, 192b13; also Metaphysics, 1065b10.

15. Aristotle is not always quite definite and consistent in his statements on this problem. Thus he writes in the Metaphysics (1044a35): 'What is the formal cause (of man)? His Essence. The final cause? His end. But perhaps these two are the same.' In other parts of the same work he seems to be more assured of the identity between the Form and the end of a change or movement. Thus we read (1069b/1070a): 'Everything that changes... is changed by something into something. That by which it is changed is the immediate mover;... that into which it is changed, the Form.' And later (1070a, 9/10): 'There are three kinds of substance: first, matter secondly, the nature towards which it moves; and thirdly, the particular substance which is composed of these two.' Now since what is here called 'nature' is as a rule called 'Form' by Aristotle, and since it is here described as an end of movement, we have: Form = end.

16. For the doctrine that movement is the realization or actualization of potentialities, see for instance Metaphysics, Book IX; or 1065b 17, where the term 'buildable' is used to describe a definite potentiality of a prospective house: 'When the "buildable"... actually exists, then it is being built; and this is the process of building.' Cp. also Aristotle's Physics, 201b4 f; furthermore, see Gomperz, op. cit, book 6, ch. 11, § 5.

18. For the definition of the soul as the First Entelechy, see the reference given by Zeller, op. cit., vol. II, p. 3, n. 1. For the meaning of Entelechy as formal cause, see op. cit., vol. I, 379, note 2. Aristotle's use of this term is anything but precise. (See also Met., 1035b15.) Cp. also note 19 to chapter 5, and text.

21. Cp. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, transl. by J. Sibree, London 1914, Introduction, 23; see also Loewenberg's Hegel — Selections (The Modern Student's Library), 366. — The whole Introduction, especially this and the following pages, shows clearly Hegel's dependence upon Aristotle. That Hegel was aware of it is shown by the way in which he alluded to Aristotle on p. 59 (Loewenberg's edition, 412).

22. Hegel, op. cit., 23 (Loewenberg's edition, 365).

23. Cp. Caird, Hegel (Blackwood 191 1), 26 f.

24. The next quotations are from the place referred to in notes 21 and 22.

25. For the following remarks, srr Hegel's Philosophical Propaedeutics, 2nd Year, Phenomenology of the Spirit, transl. by W. T. Harris (Loewenberg's edition, 68 ff.). I deviate slightly from this translation. My remarks allude to the following interesting passages: § 23: 'The impulse of self-consciousness' ('self-consciousness' in German means also self- assertion; cp. the end of chapter 16) 'consists in this: to realize its... "true nature"... It is therefore... active... in asserting itself externally...' § 24: 'Self-consciousness has in its culture, or movement, three stages:... (2) in so far as it is related to another self the relation of master and slave (domination and servitude) Hegel does not mention any other 'relation to another self. — We read further: '(3) The Relation of Master and Slave... § 32: In order to assert itself as free being and to obtain recognition as such, self-consciousness must exhibit itself to another self... § 33:... With the reciprocal demand for recognition there enters... the relation of master and slave between them... § 34: Since... each must strive to assert and prove himself... the one who prefers life to freedom enters into a condition of slavery, thereby showing that he has not the capacity' ('nature' would have been Aristotle's or Plato's expression) '... for his independence... § 35:... The one who serves is devoid of selfhood and has another self in place of his own... The master, on the contrary, looks upon the servant as reduced, and upon his own individual will as preserved and elevated... § 36: The individual will of the servant... is cancelled in his fear of the master...' etc. It is difficult to overlook an element of hysteria in this theory of human relations and their reduction to mastership and servitude. I hardly doubt that Hegel's method of burying his thoughts under heaps of words, which one must remove in order to get to his meaning (as a comparison between my various quotations and the original may show) is one of the symptoms of his hysteria; it is a kind of escape, a way of shunning the daylight. I do not doubt that this method of his would make as excellent an object for psycho-analysis as his wild dreams of domination and submission. (It must be mentioned that Hegel's dialectics — see the next chapter — carries him, at the end of § 36 here quoted, beyond the master- slave relation 'to the universal will, the transition to positive freedom'. As will be seen from chapter 12 (especially sections II and IV), these terms are just euphemisms for the totalitarian state. Thus, mastership and servitude are very appropriately 'reduced to components' of totalitarianism.) With Hegel's remark quoted here (cp. § 35) that the slave is the man who prefers life to freedom, compare Plato's remark (Republic, 387a) that free men are those who fear slavery more than death. In a sense, this is true enough; those who are not prepared to fight for their freedom will lose it. But the theory which is implied by both Plato and Hegel, and which is very popular with later authors also, is that men who give in to superior force, or who do not die rather than give in to an armed gangster, are, by nature, 'born slaves' who do not deserve to fare better. This theory, I assert, can be held only by the most violent enemies of civilization.

26. For a criticism of Wittgenstein's view that, while science investigates matters of fact, the business of philosophy is the clarification of meaning, see notes 46 and especially 51 and 52 to this chapter. (Cp. further, H. Gomperz, 'The Meanings of Meaning', in Philosophy of Science, vol. 8, 1941, especially p. 183.)

For the whole problem to which this digression (down to note 54 to this chapter) is devoted, viz. the problem of methodological essentialism versus methodological nominalism, cp. notes 27-30 to chapter 3, and text; see further especially note 38 to the present chapter.

27. For Plato's, or rather Parmenides', distinction between knowledge and opinion (a distinction which continued to be popular with more modern writers, for example with Locke and Hobbes), see notes 22 and 26 to chapter 3, and text; further, notes 19 to chapter 5, and 25- 27 to chapter 8. For Aristotle's corresponding distinction, cp. for example Metaphysics 1039b31 21nd Anal. Post., I, 33 (88b30 ff); II, 19 (100b5).

For Aristotle's distinction between demonstrative and intuitive knowledge, see the last chapter of the Anal. Post. (II, 19, especially 100b 5-17; see also 72b 18-24, 75b31, 84a31, 90a6-91a11.) For the connection between demonstrative knowledge and the 'causes' of a thing which are 'distinct from its essential nature' and thereby require a middle term, see op. cit, 11, 8 (especially 93a5, 93b26). For the analogous connection between intellectual intuition and the 'indivisible form' which it grasps — the indivisible essence and individual nature which is identical with its cause — see op. cit., 72b24, 77a4, 85a1, 88b35. See also op. cit, 90a31: 'To know the nature of a thing is to know the reason why it is' (i.e. its cause); and 93b21: 'There are essential natures which are immediate, i.e. basic premises.'

For Aristotle's recognition that we must stop somewhere in the regression of proofs or demonstrations, and accept certain principles without proof, see for example Metaphysics, 1006a7: 'It is impossible to prove everything, for then there would arise an infinite regression See also Anal. Post., II, 3 (90b, 18-27).

I may mention that my analysis of Aristotle's theory of definition agrees largely with that of Grote, but partly disagrees with that of Ross. The very great difference between the interpretations of these two writers may be just indicated by two quotations, both taken from chapters devoted to the analysis of Aristotle's Anal. Post., Book II. 'In the second book, Aristotle turns to consider demonstration as the instrument whereby definition is reached.' (Ross, Aristotle, 2nd edn, p. 49.) This may be contrasted with: 'The Definition can never be demonstrated, for it declares only the essence of the subject whereas Demonstration assumes the essence to be known...' (Grote, Aristotle, 2nd edn, 241; see also 240/241. Cp. also end of note 29 below.)

28. Cp. Aristotle's Metaphysics, 1031b7 and 1031b20. See also 996b20: 'We have knowledge of a thing if we know its essence.'

29. 'A definition is a statement that describes the essence of a thing' (Aristotle, Topics, I, 5, 101b36; VII, 3, 153a, 153a15, etc. See also Met., 1042a17)— 'The definition... reveals the essential nature' (Anal. Post., II, 3, 91al). — 'Definition is... a statement of the nature of the thing' (93b28). — 'Only those things have essences whose formulae are definitions.' (Met., 1030a5f) — 'The essence, whose formula is a definition, is also called the substance of a thing.' (Met., 1017b21) — 'Clearly, then, the definition is the formula of the essence...' (Met., 1031a13).

Regarding the principles, i.e. the starting points or basic premises of proofs, we must distinguish between two kinds. (1) The logical principles (cp. Met., 996b25 ff.) and (2) the premises from which proofs must proceed and which cannot be proven in turn if an infinite regression is to be avoided (cp. note 27 to this chapter). The latter are definitions: 'The basic premises of proofs are definitions' (Anal. Post., II, 3, 90b23; cp. 89al7, 90a35, 90b23). See also Ross, Aristotle, p. 45/46, commenting upon Anal. Post., I, 4, 20-74a4: 'The premises of science', Ross writes (p. 46), 'will, we are told, be per se in either sense (a) or sense (Z)).' On the previous page we learn that a premise is necessary per se (or essentially necessary) in the senses (a) and (b) if it rests upon a definition.

30. 'If it has a name, then there will be a formula of its meaning', says Aristotle (Met., 1030a14; see also 1030b24); and he explains that not every formula of the meaning of a name is a definition; but if the name is one of a species of a genus, then the formula will be a definition.

It is important to note that in my use (I follow here the modern use of the word) 'definition' always refers to the whole definition sentence, while Aristotle (and others who follow him in this, e.g. Hobbes) sometimes uses the word also as a synonym for 'definiens'.

Definitions are not of particulars, but only of universals (cp. Met., 1036a28) and only of essences, i.e. of something which is the species of a genus (i.e. a last differentia; cp. Met, 1038a19) and an indivisible form, see also Anal. Post. II, 13., 97b6 f.

31. That Aristotle's treatment is not very lucid may be seen from the end of note 27 to this chapter, and from a further comparison of these two interpretations. The greatest obscurity is in Aristotle's treatment of the way in which, by a process of induction, we rise to definitions that are principles; cp. especially Post, II, 19, pp. 100a, f.

32. For Plato's doctrine, see notes 25-27 to chapter 8, and text. Grote writes (Aristotle, 2nd ed., 260): 'Aristotle had inherited from Plato his doctrine of an infallible Nous or Intellect, enjoying complete immunity from error.' Grote continues to emphasize that, as opposed to Plato, Aristotle does not despise observational experience, but rather assigns to his Nous (i.e. intellectual intuition) 'a position as terminus and correlate to the process of Induction' (loc. cit, see also op. cit, p. 577). This is so; but observational experience has apparently only the function of priming and developing our intellectual intuition for its task, the intuition of the universal essence; and, indeed, nobody has ever explained how definitions, which are beyond error, can be reached by induction.

33. Aristotle's view amounts to the same as Plato's in so far as there is for both, in the last instance, no possible appeal to argument. All that can be done is to assert dogmatically of a certain definition that it is a true description of its essence; and if asked why this and no other description is true, all that remains is an appeal to the 'intuition of the essence'.

Aristotle speaks of induction in at least two senses — in a more heuristic sense of a method leading us to 'intuit the general principle' (cp. An. Pri, 67a22f , 27b25-33, Post, 71a7, 81a38-b5, 100b4 f.) and in a more empirical sense (cp. An. Pri., 68b15-37, 69a16, An. Post, 78a35, 81b5 ff., Topics, 105a13, 156a4, 157a34).

A case of an apparent contradiction, which, however, might be cleared up, is 77a4, where we read that a definition is neither universal nor particular. I suggest that the solution is not that a definition is 'not strictly a judgement at all' (as G. R. G. Mure suggests in the Oxford translation), but that it is not simply universal but 'commensurate', i.e. universal and necessary. (Cp. 73b26, 96b4, 97b25.)

For the 'argument' of Anal. Post, mentioned in the text, see 100b6 ff. For the mystical union of the knowing and the known in De Anima, see especially 425b30 f, 430a20, 431a1; the decisive passage for our purpose is 430b27 f : 'The intuitive grasp of the definition... of the essence is never in error... just as... the seeing of the special object of sight can never be in error.' For the theological passages of the Metaphysics, see especially 1072b20 ('contact') and 1075a2. See also notes 59 (2) to chapter 10, 36 to chapter 12, and notes 3, 4, 6, 29-32, and 58 to chapter 24.

For 'the whole body of fact' mentioned in the next paragraph, see the end of Anal. Post. (100b15 f).

It is remarkable how similar the views of Hobbes (a nominalist but not a methodological nominalist) are to Aristotle's methodological essentialism. Hobbes too believes that definitions are the basic premises of all knowledge (as opposed to opinion).

34. I have developed this view of scientific method in my Logic of Scientific Discovery; see, e.g. pp. 278 ff. and pp. 315 ff., for a fuller translation from Erkenntnis, vol. 5 (1934) where I say: 'We shall have to get accustomed to interpreting sciences as systems of hypotheses (instead of "bodies of knowledge"), i.e. of anticipations that cannot be established, but which we use as long as they are corroborated, and of which we are not entitled to say that they are "true" or "more or less certain" or even "probable".'

35. The quotation is from my note in Erkenntnis, vol. 3 (1933), now retranslated in The Logic of Scientific Discovery, pp. 312 ff.; it is a variation and generalization of a statement on geometry made by Einstein in his Geometry and Experience.

36. It is, of course, not possible to estimate whether theories, argument, and reasoning, or else observation and experiment, are of greater significance for science; for science is always theory tested by observation and experiment. But it is certain that all those 'positivists' who try to show that science is the 'sum total of our observations', or that it is observational rather than theoretical, are quite mistaken. The role of theory and argument in science can hardly be overrated. — Concerning the relation between proof and logical argument in general, see note 47 to this chapter.

37. Cp. e.g. Met., 1030a, 6 and 14 (see note 30 to this chapter).

38. I wish to emphasize that I speak here about nominalism versus essentialism in a purely methodological way. I do not take up any position towards the metaphysical problem of universals, i.e. towards the metaphysical problem of nominalism versus essentialism (a term which I suggest should be used instead of the traditional term 'realism'); and I certainly do not advocate a metaphysical nominalism, although I advocate a methodological nominalism. (See also notes 27 and 30 to chapter 3.)

The opposition between nominalist and essentialist definitions made in the text is an attempt to reconstruct the traditional distinction between 'verbal' and 'real' definitions. My main emphasis, however, is on the question whether the definition is read from the right to the left or from the left to the right; or, in other words, whether it replaces a long story by a short one, or a short story by a long one.

39. My contention that in science only nominalist definitions occur (I speak here of explicit definitions only and neither of implicit nor of recursive definitions) needs some defence. It certainly does not imply that terms are not used more or less 'intuitively' in science; this is clear if only we consider that all chains of definitions must start with undefined terms, whose meaning can be exemplified but not defined. Further, it seems clear that in science, especially in mathematics, we often first use a term, for instance 'dimension' or 'truth', intuitively, but proceed later to define it. But this is a rather rough description of the situation. A more precise description would be this. Some of the undefined terms used intuitively can be sometimes replaced by defined terms of which it can be shown that they fulfil the intentions with which the undefined terms have been used; that is to say, to every sentence in which the undefined terms occurred (e.g. which was interpreted as analytic) there is a corresponding sentence in which the newly defined term occurs (which follows from the definition).

One certainly can say that K. Menger has recursively defined 'Dimension' or that A. Tarski has defined 'Truth'; but this way of expressing matters may lead to misunderstandings. What has happened is that Menger gave a purely nominal definition of classes of sets of points which he labelled 'n-dimensional', because it was possible to replace the intuitive mathematical concept 'n-dimensional' by the new concept in all important contexts; and the same can be said of Tarski's concept 'Truth'. Tarski gave a nominal definition (or rather a method of drafting nominal definitions) which he labelled 'Truth', since a system of sentences could be derived from the definition corresponding to those sentences (like the law of the excluded middle) which had been used by many logicians and philosophers in connection with what they called 'Truth'.

40. If anything, our language would gain precision if we were to avoid definitions and take the immense trouble of always using the defining terms instead of the defined terms. For there is a source of imprecision in the current methods of definition: Carnap has developed (in 1934) what appears to be the first method of avoiding inconsistencies in a language using definitions. Cp. Logical Syntax of Language, 1937, §22, p. 67. (See also Hilbert-Bernays, Grundlagen d. Math., 1939, II, p. 295, note 1.) Carnap has shown that in most cases a language admitting definitions will be inconsistent even if the definitions satisfy the general rules for forming definitions. The comparative practical unimportance of this inconsistency merely rests upon the fact that we can always eliminate the defined terms, replacing them by the defining terms.

41. Several examples of this method of introducing the new term only after the need has arisen may be found in the present book. Dealing, as it does, with philosophical positions, it can hardly avoid introducing, for the sake of brevity, names for these positions. This is the reason why I have to make use of so many 'isms'. But in many cases these names are introduced only after the positions in question have been described.

42. In a more systematic criticism of the essentialist method, three problems might be distinguished which essentialism can neither escape nor solve. (1) The problem of distinguishing clearly between a mere verbal convention and an essentialist definition which 'truly' describes an essence. (2) The problem of distinguishing 'true' essential definitions from 'false' ones. (3) The problem of avoiding an infinite regression of definitions. — I shall briefly deal with the second and third of these problems only. The third of these problems will be dealt with in the text; for the second, see notes 44 (1) and 54 to this chapter.

43. The fact that a statement is true may sometimes help to explain why it appears to us as self- evident. This is the case with '2 +2 =4', or with the sentence 'the sun radiates light as well as heat'. But the opposite is clearly not the case. The fact that a sentence appears to some or even to all of us to be 'self-evident', that is to say, the fact that some or even all of us believe firmly in its truth and cannot conceive of its falsity, is no reason why it should be true. (The fact that we are unable to conceive of the falsity of a statement is in many cases only a reason for suspecting that our power of imagination is deficient or undeveloped.) It is one of the gravest mistakes if a philosophy ever offers self-evidence as an argument in favour of the truth of a sentence; yet this is done by practically all idealist philosophies. It shows that idealist philosophies are often systems of apologetics for some dogmatic beliefs.

The excuse that we are often in such a position that we must accept certain sentences for no better reason than that they are self-evident, is not valid. The principles of logic and of scientific method (especially the 'principle of induction' or the 'law of uniformity of nature') are usually mentioned as statements which we must accept, and which we cannot justify by anything but self-evidence. Even if this were so, it would be franker to say that we cannot justify them, and leave it at that. But, in fact, there is no need for a 'principle of induction'. (Cp. my The Logic of Scientific Discovery.) And as far as the 'principles of logic' are concerned, much has been done in recent years which shows that the self-evidence theory is obsolete. (Cp. especially Carnap's Logical Syntax of Language and his Introduction to Semantics.) See also note 44 (2).

44. (1) If we apply these considerations to the intellectual intuition of essences, then we can see that essentialism is unable to solve the problem: How can we find out whether or not a proposed definition which is formally correct is true also; and especially, how can we decide between two competing definitions? It is clear that for the methodological nominalist the answer to a question of this kind is trivial. For let us assume that somebody maintains (with the Oxford Dictionary) that 'A puppy is a vain, empty-headed, impertinent young man', and that he insists upon upholding this definition against somebody who clings to our previous definition. In this case, the nominalist, if he is patient enough to do so, will point out that a quarrel about labels does not interest him, since their choice is arbitrary; and he may suggest, if there is any danger of ambiguity, that one can easily introduce two different labels, for example 'puppy 1' and 'puppy2'. And if a third party should support that 'A puppy is a brown dog', then the nominalist will patiently suggest the introduction of the label 'puppy3'. But should the contesting parties continue to quarrel, either because somebody insists that only his puppy is the legitimate one, or because he insists that his puppy must, at least, be labelled 'puppy 1', then even a very patient nominalist would only shrug his shoulders. (In order to avoid misunderstandings, it should be said that methodological nominalism does not discuss the question of the existence of universals; Hobbes, accordingly, is not a methodological nominalist, but what I should call an onto logical nominalist.)

The same trivial problem, however, raises insurmountable difficulties for the essentiahst method. We have already supposed that the essentialist insists that, for instance, 'A puppy is a brown dog' is not a correct definition of the essence of 'puppiness'. How can he defend this view? Only by an appeal to his intellectual intuition of essences. But this fact has the practical consequence that the essentialist is reduced to complete helplessness, if his definition is challenged. For there are only two ways in which he can react. The one is to reiterate stubbornly that his intellectual intuition is the only true one, to which, of course, his opponent may reply in the same way, so that we reach a deadlock instead of the absolutely final and indubitable knowledge which we were promised by Aristotle. The other is to admit that his opponent's intuition may be as true as his own, but that it is of a different essence, which he unfortunately denotes by the same name. This would lead to the suggestion that two different names should be used for the two different essences, for example 'puppy 1' and 'puppy 2. But this step means giving up the essentialist position altogether. For it means that we start with the defining formula and attach to it some label, i.e. that we proceed 'from the right to the left'; and it means that we shall have to attach these labels arbitrarily. This can be seen by considering that the attempt to insist that a puppy1 is, essentially, a young dog, while the brown dog can only be a puppy2, would clearly lead to the same difficulty which has driven the essentialist into his present dilemma. Accordingly, every definition must be considered as equally admissible (provided it is formally correct); which means, in Aristotelian terminology, that one basic premise is just as true as another (which is contrary to it) and that it is impossible to make a false statement'. (This seems to have been pointed out by Antisthenes; see note 54 to this chapter.) Thus the Aristotelian claim that intellectual intuition is a source of knowledge as opposed to opinion, unerringly and indubitably true, and that it furnishes us with definitions which are the safe and necessary basic premises of all scientific deduction, is baseless in every single one of its points. And a definition turns out to be nothing but a sentence which tells us that the defined term means the same as the defining formula, and that each can be replaced by the other. Its nominalist use permits us to cut a long story short and is therefore of some practical advantage. But its essentialist use can only help us to replace a short story by a story which means the same but is much longer. This use can only encourage verbalism.

(2) For a criticism of Husserl's intuition of essences, cp. J. Kraft, From Husserl to Heidegger (in German, 1932). See also note 8 to chapter 24. Of all authors who hold related views, M. Weber had probably the greatest influence upon the treatment of sociological problems. He advocated for the social sciences a 'method of intuitive understanding'; and his 'ideal types' largely correspond to the essences of Aristotle and Husserl. It is worth mentioning that Weber saw, in spite of these tendencies, the inadmissibility of appeals to self-evidence. 'The fact that an interpretation possesses a high degree of self-evidence proves in itself nothing about its empirical validity' (Ges. Aufsaetze, 1922, p. 404); and he says quite rightly that intuitive understanding 'must always be controlled by ordinary methods'. (Loc. cit, italics mine.) But if that is so, then it is not a characteristic method of a science of 'human behaviour' as he thinks; it also belongs to mathematics, physics, etc. And it turns out that those who believe that intuitive understanding is a method peculiar to sciences of 'human behaviour' hold such views mainly because they cannot imagine that a mathematician or a physicist could become so well acquainted with his object that he could 'get the feel of it', in the way in which a sociologist 'gets the feel' of human behaviour.

45. 'Science assumes the definitions of all its terms (Ross, Aristotle, 44; cp. Anal. Post., I, 2); see also note 30 to this chapter.

46. The following quotation is from R. H. S. Grossman, Plato To-Day 1937, pp. 71 f. A very similar doctrine is expressed by M. R. Cohen and E. Nagel in their book. An Introduction to Logic and Scientific Method (1936), p. 232: 'Many of the disputes about the true nature of property, of religion, of law,... would assuredly disappear if the precisely defined equivalents were substituted for these words.' (See also notes 48 and 49 to this chapter.)

The views concerning this problem expressed by Wittgenstein in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921/22) and by several of his followers are not as definite as those of Grossman, Cohen, and Nagel. Wittgenstein is an anti-metaphysician. 'The book', he writes in the preface, 'deals with the problems of philosophy and shows, I believe, that the method of formulating these problems rests on the misunderstanding of the logic of our language.' He tries to show that metaphysics is 'simply nonsense' and tries to draw a limit, in our language, between sense and nonsense: 'The limit can... be drawn in languages and what lies on the other side of the limit will be simply nonsense.' According to Wittgenstein's book, propositions have sense. They are true or false. Philosophical propositions do not exist; they only look like propositions, but are, in fact, nonsensical. The limit between sense and nonsense coincides with that between natural science and philosophy: 'The totality of true propositions is the total natural science (or the totality of the natural sciences). — Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences.' The true task of philosophy, therefore, is not to formulate propositions; it is, rather, to clarify propositions : 'The result of philosophy is not a number of "philosophical propositions", but to make propositions clear.' Those who do not see that, and propound philosophical propositions, talk metaphysical nonsense.

(It should be remembered, in this connection, that a sharp distinction between meaningful statements which have sense, and meaningless linguistic expressions which may look like statements but which are without sense, was first made by Russell in his attempt to solve the problems raised by the paradoxes which he had discovered. Russell's division of expressions which look like statements is threefold, since statements which may be true or false, and meaningless or nonsensical pseudo-statements, may be distinguished. It is important to note that this use of the terms 'meaningless' or 'senseless' partly agrees with ordinary use, but is much sharper, since ordinarily one often calls real statements 'meaningless', for example, if they are 'absurd', i.e. self-contradictory, or obviously false. Thus a statement asserting of a certain physical body that it is at the same time in two different places is not meaningless but a false statement, or one which contradicts the use of the term 'body' in classical physics; and similarly, a statement asserting of a certain electron that it has a precise place and momentum is not meaningless — as some physicists have asserted, and as some philosophers have repeated — but it simply contradicts modem physics.)

What has been said so far can be summed up as follows. Wittgenstein looks for a line of demarcation between sense and nonsense, and finds that this demarcation coincides with that between science and metaphysics, i.e. between scientific sentences and philosophical pseudo-propositions. (That he wrongly identifies the sphere of the natural sciences with that of true sentences shall not concern us here; see, however, note 51 to this chapter.) This interpretation of his aim is corroborated when we read: 'Philosophy limits the... sphere of natural science.' (All sentences so far quoted are from pp. 75 and 77.)

How is the line of demarcation ultimately drawn? How can 'science' be distinguished from 'metaphysics', and thereby 'sense' from 'nonsense'? It is the reply given to this question which establishes the similarity between Wittgenstein's theory and that of Grossman and the rest. Wittgenstein implies that the terms or 'signs' used by scientists have meaning, while the metaphysician 'has given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions'; this is what he writes (pp. 187 and 189): 'The right method of philosophy would be this. To say nothing except what can be said, i.e. the propositions of natural science, i.e. something that has nothing to do with philosophy: and then always when someone else wished to say something metaphysical, to demonstrate to him that he had given no meaning to certain signs in his propositions.' In practice, this implies that we should proceed by asking the metaphysician: 'What do you mean by this word? What do you mean by that word?' In other words, we demand a definition from him; and if it is not forthcoming, we assume that the word is meaningless.

This theory, as will be shown in the text, overlooks the facts (a) that a witty and unscrupulous metaphysician every time he is asked, 'What do you mean by this word?', will quickly proffer a definition, so that the whole game develops into a trial of patience; (b) that the natural scientist is in no better logical position than the metaphysician; and even, if compared with a metaphysician who is unscrupulous, in a worse position.

It may be remarked that Schlick, in Erkenntnis, 1, p. 8, where he deals with Wittgenstein's doctrine, mentions the difficulty of an infinite regress; but the solution he suggests (which seems to lie in the direction of inductive definitions or 'constitutions', or perhaps of operationalism; cp. note 50 to this chapter) is neither clear nor able to solve the problem of demarcation. I think that certain of the intentions of Wittgenstein and Schlick in demanding a philosophy of meaning are fulfilled by that logical theory which Tarski has called 'Semantics'. But I also believe that the correspondence between these intentions and Semantics does not go far; for Semantics propounds propositions; it does not only 'clarify' them. — These comments upon Wittgenstein are continued in notes 51-52 to the present chapter. (See also notes 8 (2) and 32 to chapter 24; and 10 and 25 to chapter 25.)

47. It is important to distinguish between a logical deduction in general, and a proof or demonstration in particular. A proof or demonstration is a deductive argument by which the truth of the conclusion is finally established; this is how Aristotle uses the term, demanding (for example, in Anal. Post., I, 4, pp. 73a, ff.) that the 'necessary' truth of the conclusion should be established; and this is how Carnap uses the term (see especially Logical Syntax, § 10, p. 29, § 47, p. 171), showing that conclusions which are 'demonstrable' in this sense are 'analytically' true. (Into the problems concerning the terms 'analytic' and 'synthetic', I shall not enter here.)

Since Aristotle, it has been clear that not all logical deductions are proofs (i.e. demonstrations); there are also logical deductions which are not proofs; for example, we can deduce conclusions from admittedly false premises, and such deductions are not called proofs. Non-demonstrative deductions are called by Carnap 'derivations' (loc. cit.). It is interesting that a name for these non-demonstrative deductions has not been introduced earlier; it shows the preoccupation with proofs, a preoccupation which arose from the Aristotelian prejudice that 'science' or 'scientific knowledge' must establish all its statements, i.e. accept them either as self-evident premises, or prove them. But the position is this. Outside of pure logic and pure mathematics nothing can be proved. Arguments in other sciences (and even some within mathematics, as I. Lakatos has shown) are not proofs but merely derivations.

It may be remarked that there is a far-reaching parallelism between the problems of derivation on the one side and definition on the other, and between the problems of the truth of sentences and that of the meaning of terms.

A derivation starts with premises and leads to a conclusion; a definition starts (if we read it from the right to the left) with the defining terms and leads to a defined term. A derivation informs us about the truth of the conclusion, provided we are informed about the truth of the premises; a definition informs us about the meaning of the defined term, provided we are informed about the meaning of the defining terms. Thus a derivation shifts the problem of truth back to the premises, without ever being able to solve it; and a definition shifts the problem of meaning back to the defining terms, without ever being able to solve it.

48. The reason why the defining terms are likely to be rather less clear and precise than the defined terms is that they are as a rule more abstract and general. This is not necessarily true if certain modern methods of definition are employed ('definition by abstraction', a method of symbolic logic); but it is certainly true of all those definitions which Grossman can have in mind, and especially of all Aristotelian definitions (by genus and differentia).

It has been held by some positivists, especially under the influence of Locke and Hume, that it is possible to define abstract terms like those of science or of politics (see text to next note) in terms of particular, concrete observations or even of sensations. Such an 'inductive' method of definition has been called by Carnap 'constitution'. But we can say that it is impossible to 'constitute' universals in terms of particulars. (With this, cp. my The Logic of Scientific Discovery, especially sections 14, pp. 64 ff., and 25, p. 93; and Carnap's 'Testability and Meaning', in Philosophy of Science, vol. 3, 1936, pp. 419 ff., and vol. 4, pp. 1 ff.)

49. The examples are the same as those which Cohen and Nagel, op. cit, 232 f., recommend for definition. (Cp. note 46 to this chapter.)

Some general remarks on the uselessness of essentialist definitions may be added here. (Cp. also end of note 44 (1) to this chapter.)

(1) The attempt to solve a factual problem by reference to definitions usually means the substitution of a merely verbal problem for the factual one. (There is an excellent example of this method in Aristotle's Physics, II, 6, towards the end.) This may be shown for the following examples, (a) There is a factual problem: Can we return to the cage of tribalism? And by what means? (b) There is a moral problem: Should we return to the cage?

The philosopher of meaning, if faced by (a) or (b), will say: It all depends on what you mean by your vague terms; tell me how you define 'return', 'cage', 'tribalism', and with the help of these definitions I may be able to decide your problem. Against this, I maintain that if the decision can be made with the help of the definitions, if it follows from the definitions, then the problem so decided was merely a verbal problem; for it has been solved independently of facts or of moral decisions.

(2) An essentialist philosopher of meaning may do even worse, especially in connection with problem (b); he may suggest, for example, that it depends upon 'the essence' or 'the essential character' or perhaps upon 'the destiny' of our civilization whether or not we should try to return. (See also note 61 (2) to this chapter.)

(3) Essentialism and the theory of definition have led to an amazing development in Ethics. The development is one of increasing abstraction and loss of touch with the basis of all ethics — the practical moral problems, to be decided by us here and now. It leads first to the general question, 'What is good?' or 'What is the Good?'; next to 'What does "Good" mean?' and next to 'Can the problem "What does 'Good' mean?" be answered?' or 'Can "good" be defined?' G. E. Moore, who raised this last problem in his Principia Ethica, was certainly right in insisting that 'good' in the moral sense cannot be defined in 'naturalistic' terms. For, indeed, if we could, it would mean something like 'bitter' or 'sweet' or 'green' or 'red'; and it would be utterly irrelevant from the point of view of morality. Just as we need not attain the bitter, or the sweet, etc., there would be no reason to take any moral interest in a naturalistic 'good'. But although Moore was right in what is perhaps justly considered his main point, it may be held that an analysis of good or of any other concept or essence can in no way contribute to an ethical theory which bears upon the only relevant basis of all ethics, the immediate moral problem that must be solved here and now. Such an analysis can lead only to the substitution of a verbal problem for a moral one. (Cp. also note 18 (1) to chapter 5, especially upon the irrelevance of moral judgements.)

50. I have in mind the methods of 'constitution' (see note 48 to this chapter), 'implicit definition', 'definition by correlation', and 'operational definition'. The arguments of the 'operationalists' seem to be in the main true enough; but they cannot get over the fact that in their operational definitions, or descriptions, they need universal terms which have to be taken as undefined; and to them, the problem applies again.

A few hints or allusions may be added here concerning the way we 'use our terms'. For the sake of brevity, these hints will refer without explanation to certain technicalities; they may therefore, in the present form, not be generally understandable.

Of the so-called implicit definitions, especially in mathematics, Carnap has shown (Symposion I, 1927, 355 ff.; cp. also his Abriss) that they do not 'define' in the ordinary sense of this word; a system of implicit definitions cannot be considered as defining a 'model', but it defines a whole class of 'models'. Accordingly, the system of symbols defined by a system of implicit definitions cannot be considered as a system of constants, but they must be considered as variables (with a definite range, and bound by the system in a certain way to one another). I believe that there is a limited analogy between this situation and the way we 'use our terms' in science. The analogy can be described in this way. In a branch of mathematics in which we operate with signs defined by implicit definition, the fact that these signs have no 'definite meaning' does not affect our operating with them, or the precision of our theories. Why is that so? Because we do not overburden the signs. We do not attach a 'meaning' to them, beyond that shadow of a meaning that is warranted by our implicit definitions. (And if we attach to them an intuitive meaning, then we are careful to treat this as a private auxiliary device, which must not interfere with the theory.) In this way, we try to keep, as it were, within the 'penumbra of vagueness' or of ambiguity, and to avoid touching the problem of the precise limits of this penumbra or range; and it turns out that we can achieve a great deal without discussing the meaning of these signs; for nothing depends on their meaning. In a similar way, I believe, we can operate with these terms whose meaning we have learned 'operationally'. We use them, as it were, so that nothing depends upon their meaning, or as little as possible. Our 'operational definitions' have the advantage of helping us to shift the problem into a field in which nothing or little depends on words. Clear speaking is speaking in such a way that words do not matter.

51. Wittgenstein teaches in the Tractatus (cp. note 46 to this chapter where further cross- references are given) that philosophy cannot propound propositions, and that all philosophical propositions are in fact senseless pseudo-propositions. Closely connected with this is his doctrine that the true task of philosophy is not to propound sentences but to clarify them: 'The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts. — Philosophy is not a theory but an activity. A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.' ( Op. cit., p. 77.)

The question arises whether this view is in keeping with Wittgenstein's fundamental aim, the destruction of metaphysics by unveiling it as meaningless nonsense. In my The Logic of Scientific Discovery (see especially pp. 311 ff), I have tried to show that Wittgenstein's method leads to a merely verbal solution and that it must give rise, in spite of its apparent radicalism, not to the destruction or to the exclusion or even to the clear demarcation of metaphysics, but to their intrusion into the field of science, and to their confusion with science. The reasons for this are simple enough.

(1) Let us consider one of Wittgenstein's sentences, for example, 'philosophy is not a theory but an activity'. Surely, this is not a sentence belonging to 'total natural science (or the totality of the natural sciences)'. Therefore, according to Wittgenstein (see note 46 to this chapter), it cannot belong to 'the totality of true propositions'. On the other hand, it is not a false proposition either (since if it were, its negation would have to be true, and to belong to natural science). Thus we arrive at the result that it must be 'meaningless' or 'senseless' or 'nonsensical'; and the same holds for most of Wittgenstein 's propositions. This consequence of his doctrine is recognized by Wittgenstein himself, for he writes (p. 189): 'My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless...' The result is important. Wittgenstein's own philosophy is senseless, and it is admitted to be so. 'On the other hand', as Wittgenstein says in his Preface, 'the truth of the thoughts communicated here seems to me unassailable and definite. I am, therefore, of the opinion that the problems have in essentials been finally solved.' This shows that we can communicate unassailably and definitely true thoughts by way of propositions which are admittedly nonsensical, and that we can solve problems 'finally' by propounding nonsense. (Cp. also note 8 (2, b) to chapter 24.)

Consider what this means. It means that all the metaphysical nonsense against which Bacon, Hume, Kant, and Russell have fought for centuries may now comfortably settle down, and even frankly admit that it is nonsense. (Heidegger does so; cp. note 87 to chapter 12.) For now we have a new kind of nonsense at our disposal, nonsense that communicates thoughts whose truth is unassailable and definitive; in other words, deeply significant nonsense.

I do not deny that Wittgenstein's thoughts are unassailable and definitive. For how could one assail them? Obviously, whatever one says against them must be philosophical and therefore nonsense. And it can be dismissed as such. We are thus faced with that kind of position which I have described elsewhere, in connection with Hegel (cp. note 33 to chapter 12) as a reinforced dogmatism. 'All you need', I wrote in my Logik der Forschung (now translated as The Logic of Scientific Discovery: see p. 51), p. 21, 'is to determine the conception of "sense" or of "meaning" in a suitably narrow way, and you can say of all uncomfortable questions that you cannot find any "sense" or "meaning" in them. By recognizing the problems of natural science alone as "meaningful", every debate about the concept of meaning must become nonsensical. Once enthroned, the dogma of meaning is for ever raised above the possibility of attack. It is "unassailable and definitive".'

(2) But not only does Wittgenstein's theory invite every kind of metaphysical nonsense to pose as deeply significant; it also blurs what I have called (op. cit., p. 7) the problem of demarcation. This he does because of his naive idea that there is something 'essentially' or 'by nature' scientific and something 'essentially' or 'by nature' metaphysical and that it is our task to discover the 'natural' demarcation between these two. 'Positivism', I may quote myself again (pp. cit, p. 8), 'interprets the problem of demarcation in a naturalistic way; instead of interpreting this question as one to be decided according to practical usefulness, it asks for a difference that exists "by nature", as it were, between natural science and metaphysics.' But it is clear that the philosophical or methodological task can only be to suggest and to devise a useful demarcation between these two. This can hardly be done by characterizing metaphysics as 'senseless' or 'meaningless'. First, because these terms are better fitted for giving vent to one's personal indignation about metaphysicians and metaphysical systems than for a technical characterization of a line of demarcation. Secondly, because the problem is only shifted, for we must now ask: 'What do "meaningful" and "meaningless" mean?' If 'meaningful' is only an equivalent for 'scientific', and 'meaningless' for 'non-scientific', then we have clearly made no progress. For reasons such as these I suggested (pp. cit, 8 ff., 21 f., 227) that we eliminate the emotive terms 'meaning', 'meaningful', 'meaningless', etc., from the methodological discussion altogether. (Recommending that we solve the problem of demarcation by using falsifiability or testability, or degrees of testability, as criterion of the empirical character of a scientific system, I suggested that it was of no advantage to introduce 'meaningful' as an emotive equivalent of 'testable'.) *In spite of my explicit refusal to regard falsifiability or testability (or anything else) as a 'criterion of meaning', I find that philosophers frequently attribute to me the proposal to adopt this as a criterion of meaning or of 'meaningfulness'. (See, for example. Philosophic Thought in France and in the United States, edited by M. Farber, 1950, p. 570.)*

But even if we eliminate all reference to 'meaning' or 'sense' from Wittgenstein's theories, his solution of the problem of demarcating science from metaphysics remains most unfortunate. For since he identifies 'the totality of true propositions' with the totality of natural science, he excludes all those hypotheses from 'the sphere of natural science' which are not true. And since we can never know of a hypothesis whether or not it is true, we can never know whether or not it belongs to the sphere of natural science. The same unfortunate result, namely, a demarcation that excludes all hypotheses from the sphere of natural science, and therefore includes them in the field of metaphysics, is attained by Wittgenstein's famous 'principle of verification', as I pointed out in Erkenntnis, 3 (1933), p. 427. (For a hypothesis is, strictly speaking, not verifiable, and if we speak loosely, then we can say that even a metaphysical system like that of the early atomists has been verified.) Again, this conclusion has been drawn in later years by Wittgenstein himself, who, according to Schlick (cp. my The Logic of Scientific Discovery, note 7 to section 4), asserted in 1931 that scientific theories are 'not really propositions', i.e. not meaningful. Theories, hypotheses, that is to say, the most important of all scientific utterances, are thus thrown out of the temple of natural science, and therefore put on a level with metaphysics.

Wittgenstein's original view in the Tractatus can only be explained by the assumption that he overlooked the difficulties connected with the status of a scientific hypothesis which always goes far beyond a simple enunciation of fact; he overlooked the problem of universality or generality. In this, he followed in the footsteps of earlier positivists, notably of Comte, who wrote (cp. his Early Essays on Social Philosophy, edited by H. D. Hutton, 1911, p. 223; see F. A. von Hayek, Economica, VIII, 1941, p. 300): 'Observation of facts is the only solid basis of human knowledge... a proposition which does not admit of being reduced to a simple enunciation of fact, special or general, can have no real and intelligible sense.' Comte, although he remained unaware of the gravity of the problem hidden behind the simple phrases 'general fact', at least mentions this problem, by inserting the words 'special or general'. If we omit these words, then the passage becomes a very clear and concise formulation of Wittgenstein's fundamental criterion of sense or meaning, as formulated by him in the Tractatus (all propositions are truth-functions of, and therefore reducible to, atomic propositions, i.e. pictures of atomic facts), and as expounded by Schlick in 193 1. — Comte 's criterion of meaning was adopted by J. S. Mill.

To sum up. The anti-metaphysical theory of meaning in Wittgenstein's Tractatus, far from helping to combat metaphysical dogmatism and oracular philosophy, represents a reinforced dogmatism that opens wide the door to the enemy, deeply significant metaphysical nonsense, and throws out, by the same door, the best friend, that is to say, scientific hypothesis.

52. It appears that irrationalism in the sense of a doctrine or creed that does not propound connected and debatable arguments but rather propounds aphorisms and dogmatic statements which must be 'understood' or else left alone, will generally tend to become the property of an esoteric circle of the initiated. And, indeed, this prognosis seems to be partly corroborated by some of the publications that come from Wittgenstein's school. (I do not wish to generalize; for example, everything I have seen of F. Waismann's writing is presented as a chain of rational and exceedingly clear arguments, and entirely free from the attitude of 'take it or leave if.)

Some of these esoteric publications seem to be without a serious problem; to me, they appear to be subtle for subtlety's sake. It is significant that they come from a school which started by denouncing philosophy for the barren subtlety of its attempts to deal with pseudo- problems.

I may end this criticism by stating briefly that I do not think that there is much justification for fighting metaphysics in general, or that anything worth while will result from such a fight. It is necessary to solve the problem of the demarcation of science from metaphysics. But we should recognize that many metaphysical systems have led to important scientific results. I mention only the system of Democritus; and that of Schopenhauer which is very similar to that of Freud. And some, for instance those of Plato or Malebranche or Schopenhauer, are beautiful structures of thought. But I believe, at the same time, that we should fight those metaphysical systems which tend to bewitch and to confuse us. But clearly, we should do the same even with un-metaphysical and anti-metaphysical systems, if they exhibit this dangerous tendency. And I think that we cannot do this at one stroke. We have rather to take the trouble to analyse the systems in some detail; we must show that we understand what the author means, but that what he means is not worth the effort to understand it. (It is characteristic of all these dogmatic systems and especially of the esoteric systems that their admirers assert of all critics that 'they do not understand'; but these admirers forget that understanding must lead to agreement only in the case of sentences with a trivial content. In all other cases, one can understand and disagree.)

53. Cp. Schopenhauer, Grundprobleme (4th edn, 1890, p. 147). He comments upon 'intellectually intuiting reason that makes its pronouncements from the tripod of the oracle' (hence my term 'oracular philosophy'); and he continues: 'This is the origin of that philosophic method which entered the stage immediately after Kant, of this method of mystifying and imposing upon people, of deceiving them and throwing dust in their eyes — the method of windbaggery. One day this era will be recognized by the history of philosophy as the age of dishonesty.' (Then follows the passage quoted in the text.) Concerning the irrationalist attitude of 'take it or leave if, cp. also text to notes 39-40 to chapter 24.

54. Plato's theory of definition (cp. note 27 to chapter 3 and note 23 to chapter 5), which Aristotle later developed and systematized, met its main opposition (1) from Antisthenes, (2) from the school of Isocrates, especially Theopompus.

(1) Simplicius, one of the best of our sources on these very doubtful matters, presents Antisthenes (ad Arist. Categ., pp. 66b, 67b) as an opponent of Plato's theory of Forms or Ideas, and in fact, of the doctrine of essentialism and intellectual intuition altogether. 'I can see a horse, Plato', Antisthenes is reported to have said, 'but I cannot see its horseness.' (A very similar argument is attributed by a lesser source, D.L., VI, 53, to Diogenes the Cynic, and there is no reason why the latter should not have used it too.) I think that we may rely upon Simplicius (who appears to have had access to Theophrastus), considering that Aristotle's own testimony in the Metaphysics (especially in Met., 1043b24) squares well with this anti-essentialism of Antisthenes.

The two passages in the Metaphysics in which Aristotle mentions Antisthenes' objection to the essentialist theory of definitions are both very interesting. In the first (Met., 1024b32) we hear that Antisthenes raised the point discussed in note 44 (1) to this chapter; that is to say, that there is no way of distinguishing between a 'true' and a 'false' definition (of 'puppy', for example) so that two apparently contradictory definitions would only refer to two different essences, 'puppy 1' and 'puppy 2'; thus there would be no contradiction, and it would hardly be possible to speak of false sentences. 'Antisthenes', Aristotle writes about this criticism, 'showed his crudity by claiming that nothing could be described except by its proper formula, one formula for one thing; from which it followed that there could be no contradiction; and almost that it was impossible to make a false statement.' (The passage has usually been interpreted as containing Antisthenes' positive theory, instead of his criticism of the doctrine of definition. But this interpretation neglects Aristotle's context. The whole passage deals with the possibility of false definitions, i.e. with precisely that problem which gives rise, in view of the inadequacy of the theory of intellectual intuition, to the difficulties described in note 44 (1). And it is clear from Aristotle's text that he is troubled by these difficulties as well as by Antisthenes' attitude towards them.) The second passage (Met., 1043b24) also agrees with the criticism of essentialist definitions developed in the present chapter. It shows that Antisthenes attacked essentialist definitions as useless, as merely substituting a long story for a short one; and it shows further that Antisthenes very wisely admitted that, although it is useless to define, it is possible to describe or to explain a thing by referring to the similarity it bears to a thing already known, or, if it is composite, by explaining what its parts are. 'Indeed there is', Aristotle writes, 'something in that difficulty which has been raised by the Antisthenians and other such-like uneducated people. They said that what a thing is' (or the 'what is it' of a thing) 'cannot be defined; for the so-called definition, they say, is nothing but a long formula. But they admit that it is possible to explain, for example of silver, what sort of a thing it is; for we may say that it is similar to tin.' From this doctrine it would follow, Aristotle adds, 'that it is possible to give a definition and a formula of the composite kind of things or substances, whether they are sensible things, or objects of intellectual intuition; but not of their primary parts...'(In the sequel, Aristotle wanders off, trying to link this argument with his doctrine that a defining formula is composed of two parts, genus and differentia, which are related, and united, like matter and form.)

I have dealt here with this matter since it appears that the enemies of Antisthenes, for example Aristotle (cp. Topics, I, 104b21), cited what he said in a manner which has led to the impression that it is not Antisthenes' criticism of essentialism but rather his positive doctrine. This impression was made possible by mixing it up with another doctrine probably held by Antisthenes; I have in mind the simple doctrine that we must speak plainly, just using each term in one meaning, and that in this way we can avoid all those difficulties whose solution is unsuccessfully attempted by the theory of definitions.

All these matters are, as mentioned before, very uncertain, owing to the scantiness of our evidence. But I think that Grote is likely to be right when he characterizes 'this debate between Antisthenes and Plato' as the 'first protest of Nominalism against the doctrine of an extreme Realism' (or in our terminology, of an extreme essentialism). Grote 's position may be thus defended against Field's attack (Plato and His Contemporaries, 167) that it is 'quite wrong' to describe Antisthenes as a nominalist. In support of my interpretation of Antisthenes, I may mention that against the scholastic theory of definitions, very similar arguments were used by Descartes (cp. The Philosophical Works, translated by Haldane and Ross, 1911, vol. I, p. 317) and, less clearly, by Locke (Essay, Book III, ch. III, § 11, to ch. IV, § 6; also ch. X, §§ 4 to 11; see especially ch. IV, § 5). Both Descartes and Locke, however, remained essentialists. Essentialism itself was attacked by Hobbes (cp. note 33 above) and by Berkeley who might be described as one of the first to hold a methodological nominalism, quite apart from his ontological nominalism; see also note 7 (2) to chapter 25.

(2) Of other critics of the Platonic -Aristotelian theory of definition, I mention only Theopompus (quoted by Epictetus, II, 17, 4-10; see Grote, Plato, I, 324). I think it likely that, as opposed to the generally accepted view, Socrates himself would not have favoured the theory of definitions; what he seems to have combated was the merely verbal solution of ethical problems; and his so-called attempted definitions of ethical terms, considering their negative results, may well be attempts to destroy verbalist prejudices.

(3) I wish to add here that in spite of all my criticism I am very ready to admit Aristotle's merits. He is the founder of logic, and down to Principia Mathematica, all logic can be said to be an elaboration and generalization of the Aristotelian beginnings. (A new epoch in logic has indeed begun, in my opinion, though not with the so-called 'non-Aristotelian' or 'multi- valued' systems, but rather with the clear distinction between 'object- language' and 'meta- language'.) Furthermore, Aristotle has the great merit of having tried to tame idealism by his common-sense approach which insists that only individual things are 'real' (and that their 'forms' and 'matter' are only aspects or abstractions). *Yet this very approach is responsible for the fact that Aristotle does not even attempt to solve Plato's problem of universals (see notes 19 and 20 to chapter 3, and text), i.e., the problem of explaining why certain things resemble one another and others do not. For why should there not be as many different Aristotelian essences in things as there are things?*

55. The influence of Platonism especially upon the Gospel of St. John is clear; and this influence is less noticeable in the earlier Gospels, though I do not assert that it is absent. Nevertheless the Gospels exhibit a clearly anti-intellectualist and anti-philosophizing tendency. They avoid an appeal to philosophical speculation, and they are definitely against scholarship and dialectics, for instance, that of the 'scribes'; but scholarship means, in this period, interpreting the scriptures in a dialectical and philosophical sense, and especially in the sense of the Neo-Platonists.

56. The problem of nationalism and the superseding of Jewish parochial tribalism by internationalism plays a most important part in the early history of Christianity; the echoes of these struggles can be found in the Acts (especially 10, 15 ff; 11, 1-18; see also St. Matthew 3, 9, and the polemics against tribal feeding taboos in Acts 10, 10-15). It is interesting that this problem turns up together with the social problem of wealth and poverty, and with that of slavery; see Galatians 3, 28; and especially Acts 5, I-II, where the retention of private property is described as mortal sin.

The survival in the Ghettos of eastern Europe, down to 1914 and even longer, of arrested and petrified forms of Jewish tribalism is very interesting. (Cp. the way in which the Scottish tribes attempted to cling to their tribal life.)

57. The quotation is from Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. VI, p. 202; the passage deals with the motive for the persecution of Christianity by the Roman rulers, who were usually very tolerant in matters of religion. 'The element in Christianity', Toynbee writes, 'that was intolerable to the Imperial Government was the Christians' refusal to accept the Government's claim that it was entitled to compel its subjects to act against their conscience ... So far from checking the propagation of Christianity, the martyrdoms proved the most effective agencies of conversion...'

58. For Julian's Neo-Platonic Anti-Church with its Platonizing hierarchy, and his fight against the 'atheists', i.e. Christianity, cp. for example Toynbee, op. cit, V, pp. 565 and 584; I may quote a passage from J. Geffken (quoted by Toynbee, loc. cit.): 'In Jamblichus' (a pagan philosopher and number-mystic and founder of the Syrian school of Neo-Platonists, living about A.D. 300) 'the individual religious experience... is eliminated. Its place is taken by a mystical church with sacraments, by a scrupulous exactness in carrying out the forms of worship, by a ritual that is closely akin to magic, and by a clergy... Julian's ideas about the elevation of the priesthood reproduce... exactly the standpoint of Jamblichus, whose zeal for the priests, for the details of the forms of worship, and for a systematic orthodox doctrine has prepared the ground for the construction of a pagan church.' We can recognize in these principles of the Syrian Platonist and of Julian the development of the genuine Platonic (and perhaps also late Jewish; cp. note 56 to this chapter) tendency to resist the revolutionary religion of individual conscience and humaneness by arresting all change and by introducing a rigid doctrine kept pure by a philosophic priest caste and by rigid taboos. (Cp. text to notes 14 and 18-23 to chapter 7; and chapter 8, especially text to note 34.) With Justinian's prosecution of non-Christians and heretics and his suppression of philosophy in 529, the tables are turned; it is now Christianity which adopts totalitarian methods and the control of conscience by violence. The dark ages begin.

59. For Toynbee's warning against an interpretation of the rise of Christianity in the sense of Pareto's advice (for which cp. notes 65 to chapter 10 and 1 to chapter 13) see, for example, A Study of History, V, 709.

60. For Critias' and Plato's and Aristotle's cynical doctrine that religion is opium for the people, cp. notes 5 to 18 (especially 15 and 18) to chapter 8. (See also Aristotle's Topics, I, 2, 101a30 ff.) For later examples (Polybius and Strabo) see, for example, Toynbee, op. cit., V, 646 f, 561. Toynbee quotes from Polybius (Historiae, VI, 56): 'The point in which the Roman constitution excels others most conspicuously is to be found, in my opinion, in its handling of Religion... The Romans have managed to forge the main bond of their social order... out of superstition.' etc. And he quotes from Strabo: 'A rabble... cannot be induced to answer to the call of Philosophic Reason... In dealing with people of that sort, you cannot do without superstition.' etc. In view of this long series of Platonizing philosophers who teach that religion is 'opium for the people' I fail to see how the imputation of similar motives to Constantine can be described as anachronistic.

It may be mentioned that it is a formidable opponent of whom Toynbee says, by implication, that he lacks historical sense: Lord Acton. For he writes (cp. his History of Freedom, 1909, p. 30 f., italics mine) of Constantine's relation to the Christians: 'Constantine, in adopting their faith, intended neither to abandon his predecessor's scheme of policy nor to renounce the fascinations of arbitrary authority, but to strengthen his throne with the support of a religion which had astonished the world by its power of resistance... '

61. I admire the mediaeval cathedrals as much as anybody, and I am perfectly prepared to recognize the greatness and uniqueness of medieval craftsmanship. But I believe that aestheticism must never be used as an argument against humanitarianism.

The eulogy of the Middle Ages seems to begin with the Romantic movement in Germany, and it has become fashionable with the renaissance of this Romantic movement which unfortunately we are witnessing at the present time. It is, of course, an anti-rationalist movement; it will be discussed from another point of view in chapter 24. The two attitudes towards the Middle Ages, rationalism and anti-rationalism, correspond to two interpretations of 'history' (cp. chapter 25).

(1) The rationalist interpretation of history views with hope those periods in which man attempted to look upon human affairs rationally. It sees in the Great Generation and especially in Socrates, in early Christianity (down to Constantine), in the Renaissance and the period of the Enlightenment, and in modern science, parts of an often interrupted movement, the efforts of men to free themselves, to break out of the cage of the closed society, and to form an open society. It is aware that this movement does not represent a 'law of progress' or anything of that sort, but that it depends solely upon ourselves, and must disappear if we do not defend it against its antagonists as well as against laziness and indolence. This interpretation sees in the intervening periods dark ages with their Platonizing authorities, their hierarchies of priest and tribalist orders of knights.

A classical formulation of this interpretation has been made by Lord Acton (op. cit, p. 1; italics mine). 'Liberty,' he writes, 'next to religion, has been the motive of good deeds and the common pretext of crime, from the sowing of the seed at Athens, two thousand five hundred and sixty years ago... In every age its progress has been beset by its natural enemies, by ignorance and superstition, by lust of conquest and by love of ease, by the strong man's craving for power, and the poor man's craving for food. During long intervals it has been utterly arrested... No obstacle has been so constant, or so difficult to overcome, as uncertainty and confusion touching the nature of true liberty. If hostile interests have wrought much injury, false ideas have wrought still more.'

It is strange how strong a feeling of darkness prevails in the dark ages. Their science and their philosophy are both obsessed by the feeling that the truth has once been known, and has been lost. This expresses itself in the belief in the lost secret of the ancient philosopher's stone and in the ancient wisdom of astrology no less than in the belief that an idea cannot be of any value if it is new, and that every idea needs the backing of ancient authority (Aristotle and the Bible). But the men who felt that the secret key to wisdom was lost in the past were right. For this key is faith in reason, and liberty. It is the free competition of thought, which cannot exist without freedom of thought.

(2) The other interpretation agrees with Toynbee in seeing, in Greek as well as in modern rationalism (since the Renaissance), an aberration from the path of faith. 'To the present writer's eye', Toynbee says (A Study of History, vol. V, pp. 6 f, note; italics mine), 'the common element of rationalism which may be discernible in the Hellenic and Western Civilization is not so distinctive as to mark this pair of societies off from all other representatives of the species... If we regard the Christian element of our Western Civilization as being the essence of it, then our reversion to Hellenism might be taken to be, not a fulfilment of the potentialities of Western Christendom, but an aberration from the proper path of Western growth — in fact, a false step which it may or may not be possible now to retrieve.'

In contrast to Toynbee, I do not doubt for a minute that it is possible to retrieve this step and to return to the cage, to the opressions, superstition, and pestilences, of the Middle Ages. But I believe that we had much better not do so. And I contend that what we ought to do will have to be decided by ourselves, through free decisions, and not by historicist essentialism; nor, as Toynbee holds (see also note 49 (2) to this chapter), by 'the question of what the essential Character of the Western Civilization may be'.

(The passages here quoted from Toynbee are parts of his reply to a letter from Dr. E. Bevan; and Bevan 's letter, i.e. the first of his two letters quoted by Toynbee, seems to me to present very clearly indeed what I call the rationalist interpretation.)

Concerning my remark in the text, at the end of this chapter, that Democritus' science and morals still live with us, I may mention that a direct historical connection leads from Democritus and Epicurus via Lucretius not only to Gassendi but undoubtedly to Locke also. 'Atoms and the void' is the characteristic phrase whose presence always reveals the influence of this tradition; and as a rule, the natural philosophy of 'atoms and the void' goes together with the moral philosophy of an altruistic hedonism or utilitarianism. In regard to hedonism and utilitarianism, I believe that it is indeed necessary to replace their principle: maximize pleasure! by one which is probably more in keeping with the original views of Democritus and Epicurus, more modest, and much more urgent. I mean the rule: minimize pain! I believe (cp. chapters 9, 24, and 25) that it is not only impossible but very dangerous to attempt to maximize the pleasure or the happiness of the people, since such an attempt must lead to totalitarianism. But there is little doubt that most of the followers of Democritus (down to Bertrand Russell, who is still interested in atoms, geometry, and hedonism) would have little quarrel with the suggested re-formulation of their pleasure principle provided it is taken for what it is meant, and not for an ethical criterion.

General Note to this Chapter. Wherever possible, I refer in these notes to Selections, i.e. to Hegel: Selections, edited by J. Loewenberg, 1929. (From The Modern Student's Library of Philosophy.) This excellent and easily accessible selection contains a great number of the most characteristic passages from Hegel, so that it was possible in many cases to choose the quotations from them. Quotations from the Selections will, however, be accompanied by references to editions of the original texts. Wherever possible I have referred to 'WW', i.e. to Hegel's Samtliche Werke, herausgegeben von H. Glockner, Stuttgart (from 1927 on). An important version of the Encyclopedia, however, which is not included in WW, is quoted as 'Encycl. 1870', i.e., G. W. F. Hegel, Encyclopadie, herausgegeben von K. Rosenkranz, Berlin 1870. Passages from the Philosophy of Law (ox Philosophy of Right) are quoted by paragraph numbers, and the letter L indicates that the passage is from the lecture notes added by Cans in his edition of 1833. 1 have not always adopted the wording of the translators.

1. In his Inaugural Dissertation, De Orbitis Planetarum, 1801. (The asteroid Ceres had been discovered on the 1st of January, 1801.)

4. The whole Philosophy of Nature is full of such definitions. H. Stafford Hatfield, for instance, translates (cp. his translation of Bavink, The Anatomy of Modern Science, pp. 30) Hegel's definition of heat: 'Heat is the self-restoration of matter in its formlessness, its liquidity the triumph of its abstract homogeneity over specific definiteness, its abstract, purely self-existing continuity, as negation of negation, is here set as activity.' Similar is, for example, Hegel's definition of electricity.

For the next quotation see Hegel's Briefe, I, 373, quoted by Wallace, The Logic of Hegel (transl., pp. xiv f., italics mine).

5. Cp. Falkenberg, History of Modern Philosophy (6th German edn, 1908, 612; cp. the English translation by Armstrong, 1895, 632).

6. I have in mind the various philosophies of 'evolution' or 'progress' or 'emergence' such as those of H. Bergson, S. Alexander, Field-Marshal Smuts or A. N. Whitehead.

7. The passage is quoted and analysed in note 43 (2), below.

8. For the eight quotations in this paragraph, cp. Selections, pp. 389 (= WW, vi, 71), 447, 443, 446 (three quotations); 388 (two quotations) (= WW, xi, 70). The passages are from The Philosophy of Law (§§ 272L, 258L, 269L, 270L); the first and the last are from the Philosophy of History.

For Hegel's holism, and for his organic theory of the state, see for example his reference to Menenius Agrippa (Livy, II, 32; for a criticism, see note 7 to chapter 10) in the Philosophy of Law, § 269L; and his classical formulation of the opposition between the power of an organized body and the powerless 'heap, or aggregate, of atomic units', at the end of § 290L (cp. also note 70 to this chapter).

Two other very important points in which Hegel adopts Plato's political teaching are: (1) The theory of the One, the Few, and the Many; see, for example, op. cit., § 273: The monarch is one person; the few enter the scene with the executive; and the many... with the legislative; also the reference is to 'the many' in § 301, etc. (2) The theory of the opposition between knowledge and opinion (cp. the discussion of op. cit., § 270, on freedom of thought, in the text between notes 37 and 38, below), which Hegel uses for characterizing public opinion as the 'opinion of the many' or even as the 'caprice of the many', cp. op. cit., §§ 316 ff., and note 76, below.

For Hegel's interesting criticism of Plato, and the even more interesting twist he gives to his own criticism, cp. note 43 (2) to this chapter.

9. For these remarks, cp. especially chapter 25.

10. Cp. Selections, xii (J. Loewenberg in the Introduction to the Selections).

11. I have in mind not only his immediate philosophical predecessors (Fichte, Schlegel, Schelling, and especially Schleiermacher), or his ancient sources (Heraclitus, Plato, Aristotle), but especially Rousseau, Spinoza, Montesquieu, Herder, Burke (cp. section IV to this chapter), and the poet Schiller. Hegel's indebtedness to Rousseau, Montesquieu (cp. The Spirit of the Laws, XIX, 4 f.), and Herder, for his Spirit of the Nation, is obvious. His relations to Spinoza are of a different character. He adopts, or rather adapts, two important ideas of the determinist Spinoza. The first is that there is no freedom but in the rational recognition of the necessity of all things, and in the power which reason, by this recognition, may exert over the passions. This idea is developed by Hegel into an identification of reason (or 'Spirit') with freedom, and of his teaching that freedom is the truth of necessity (Selections, 213, Encycl. 1870, p. 154). The second idea is Spinoza's strange moral positivism, his doctrine that might is right, an idea which he contrived to use for the fight against what he called tyranny i.e. the attempt to wield power beyond the limits of one's actual power. Spinoza's main concern being the freedom of thought, he taught that it is impossible for a ruler to force men's thoughts (for thoughts are free), and that the attempt to achieve the impossible is tyrannical. On this doctrine, he based his support of the power of the secular state (which, he naively hoped, would not curtail the freedom of thought) as against the Church. Hegel also supported the state against the Church, and he paid lip- service to the demand for freedom of thought whose great political significance he realized (cp. the preface to the Phil, of Law); but at the same time he perverted this idea, claiming that the state must decide what is true and false, and may suppress what it deems to be false (see the discussion of the Phil, of Law, § 270, in the text between notes 37 and 38, below). From Schiller, Hegel took (incidentally without acknowledgement or even indication that he was quoting) his famous dictum 'The history of the world is the World's court of justice'. But this dictum (at the end of § 340 of the Phil, of Law; cp. text to note 26) implies a good deal of Hegel's historicist political philosophy; not only his worship of success and thus of power, but also his peculiar moral positivism, and his theory of the reasonableness of history.

The question whether Hegel was influenced by Vico seems to be still open. (Weber's German translation of the New Science was published in 1822.)

12. Schopenhauer was an ardent admirer not only of Plato but also of Heraclitus. He believed that the mob fill their bellies like the beast; he adopted Bias' dictum 'all men are wicked' as his device; and he believed that a Platonic aristocracy was the best government. At the same time, he hated nationalism, and especially German nationalism. He was a cosmopolite. The rather repulsive expressions of his fear and hatred of the revolutionaries of 1848 can be partly explained by his apprehension that under 'mob rules' he might lose his independence, and partly by his hatred of the nationalist ideology of the movement.

13. For Schopenhauer's suggestion of this motto (taken from Cymbeline, Act V, Sc. 4) see his Will in Nature (4th edn, 1878), p. 7. The two following quotations are from his Works (2nd edn, 1888), vol. V, 103 f , and vol. II, pp. xvii, f (i.e. Preface to the second edn of the World as Will and Idea; the italics are mine). I believe that everybody who has studied Schopenhauer must be impressed by his sincerity and truthfulness. Cp. also the judgement of Kierkegaard, quoted in the text to notes 19/20 to chapter 25.

14. Schwegler's first publication (1839) was an essay in memory of Hegel. The quotation is from his History of Philosophy, transl. by H. Stirling, 7th edn, p. 322.

15. 'To English readers Hegel was first introduced in the powerful statement of his principles by Dr. Hutchinson Stirling', writes E. Caird (Hegel, 1883, Preface, p. vi); which may show that Stirling was taken quite seriously. The following quotation is from Stirling's Annotations to Schwegler's History, p. 429. I may remark that the motto of the present chapter is taken from p. 441 of the same work.

16. Stirling writes (op. cit., 441): 'The great thing at last for Hegel was a good citizen, and for him who was already that, there was to Hegel's mind no call for philosophy. Thus he tells a M. Duboc who writes to him about his difficulties with the system, that, as a good head of a house and father of a family, possessed of a faith that is firm, he has pretty well enough, and may consider anything further, in the way of philosophy, for instance, as but... an intellectual luxury.' Thus, according to Stirling, Hegel was not interested in clearing up a difficulty in his system, but merely in converting 'bad' citizens into 'good' ones.

17. The following quotation is from Stirling, op. cit., 444 f. Stirling continues the last sentence quoted in the text: 'I have gained much from Hegel, and will always thankfully acknowledge that much, but my position in his regard has been simply that of one who, in making the unintelligible intelligible, would do a service to the public' And he ends the paragraph by saying: 'My general aim... I conceive to be identical with Hegel's... that, namely, of a Christian philosopher.'

18. Cp., for example, A Textbook of Marxist Philosophy.

19. I take this passage from the most interesting study. Nationalism and the Cultural Crisis in Prussia, 1806-1815, by E. N. Anderson (1939), p. 270. Anderson's analysis is critical of nationalism, and he clearly recognizes the neurotic and hysterical element in it (cp., for example, pp. 6 f). And yet I cannot entirely agree with his attitude. Led, I suppose, by the historian's desire for objectivity, he seems to me to take the nationalist movement too seriously. I cannot agree, more particularly, with his condemnation of King Frederick William for his lack of understanding of the nationalist movement. 'Frederick William lacked the capacity for appreciating greatness', Anderson writes on p. 271, 'whether in an ideal or in an action. The course into nationalism which the rising German literature and philosophy opened so brilliantly for others remained closed to him.' But by far the best of German literature and philosophy was anti-nationalistic; Kant and Schopenhauer were both anti-national, and even Goethe kept away from nationalism; and it is unjustifiable to demand of anybody, and especially of a simple, candid, conservative like the king, that he should get excited about Fichte's windbaggery. Many will fully agree with the king's judgement when he spoke (loc. cit.) of 'eccentric, popular scribbling'. Although I agree that the king's conservatism was very unfortunate, I feel the greatest respect for his simplicity, and his resistance to the wave of nationalist hysteria.

20. Cp. Selections, xi (J. Loewenberg in the Introduction to the Selections).

25. I am alluding to Bergson, and especially to his Creative Evolution. (Engl, transl. by A. Mitchell, 1913.) It appears that the Hegelian character of this work is not sufficiently recognized; and, indeed, Bergson 's lucidity and reasoned presentation of his thought sometimes make it difficult to realize how much his philosophy depends on Hegel. But if we consider, for example, that Bergson teaches that the essence is change, or if we read passages like the following (cp. op. cit., 275 and 278), then there remains little doubt.

'Essential also is the progress to reflection', writes Bergson. 'If our analysis is correct, it is consciousness, or rather super-consciousness, that is at the origin of life... Consciousness corresponds exactly to the living being's power of choice; it is co-extensive with the fringe of possible action that surrounds real action: consciousness is synonymous with invention and with freedom.' (Italics mine.) The identification of consciousness (or Spirit) with freedom is the Hegelian version of Spinoza. This goes so far that theories can be found in Hegel which I feel inclined to describe as 'unmistakably Bergsonian'; for example, 'The very essence of Spirit is activity; it realizes its potentiality; it makes itself its own deed, its own work...' (Selections, 435 = WW, xi, 113.)

26. Cp. notes 21 to 24 to chapter 11, and text. Another characteristic passage is this (cp. Selections, 409 = WW, xi, 89): 'The principle of Development involves also the existence of a latent germ of being — a capacity or potentiality striving to realize itself.' — For the quotation later in the paragraph, cp. Selections, 468 (i.e. Phil, of Law, § 340; see also note 11, above).

27. Considering, on the other hand, that even a second-hand Hegelianism, i.e. a third-or fourth- hand Fichteanism and Aristotelianism, has often been noisily acclaimed as an original achievement, it is perhaps a little hard on Hegel to say that he was unoriginal. (But cp. note 11.)

28. Cp. Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, 2nd edn, p. 514 (top); see also p. 518 (end of section 5); for the motto of my Introduction, see Kant's letter to Mendelssohn of April 8th, 1766.

29. Cp. note 53 to chapter 11, and text.

30. It is perhaps reasonable to assume that what one usually calls the 'spirit of a language' is very largely the traditional standard of clarity introduced by the great writers of that particular language. There are some further traditional standards in a language, apart from clarity, for example, standards of simplicity, of ornamentation, of brevity, etc.; but the standard of clarity is perhaps the most important of them; and it is a cultural inheritance which should be carefully guarded. Language is one of the most important institutions of social life, and its clarity is a condition of its functioning as a means of rational communication. Its use for the communication of emotions is much less important, for we can communicate a great deal of emotion without saying a word.

* It may be worth saying that Hegel, who had learned from Burke something about the importance of the historical growth of traditions, did in fact do much to destroy the intellectual tradition which Kant had founded, both by his doctrine of 'the cunning of reason' which reveals itself in passion (see notes 82, 84 and text), and by his actual method of arguing. But he did more. By his historical relativism — by his theory that truth is relative, dependent on the spirit of the age — he helped to destroy the tradition of searching for truth, and of respecting truth. See also section IV of this chapter, and my paper, 'Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition' (in The Rationalist Annual , 1949; now in my Conjectures and Refutations) *

31. Attempts to refute Kant's Dialectics (his doctrine of Antinomies) seem to be very rare. Serious criticism attempting to clarify and restate Kant's arguments can be found in Schopenhauer's World as Will and Idea and in J. F. Fries' New or Anthropological Critique of Reason, second German edn, 1828, pp. xxiv ff. I have tried to interpret Kant as holding that mere speculation cannot establish anything where experience cannot help to weed out false theories. (Cp. Mind, 49, 1940, p. 416; also. Conjectures and Refutations, pp. 326 f. In the same volume of Mind, pp. 204 ff., there is a careful and interesting criticism of Kant's argument by M. Fried.) For an attempt to make sense of Hegel's dialectical theory of reason as well as of his collectivist interpretation of reason (his 'objective spirit'), see the analysis of the social or interpersonal aspect of scientific method in chapter 23, and the corresponding interpretation of 'reason' in chapter 24.

32. I have given a detailed justification of this in 'What is Dialectic?' (Mind, 49, pp. 403 ff.; see especially the last sentence on p. 410: also, Conjectures and Refutations, p. 321). See also a further note under the title. Are Contradictions Embracing? *This has since appeared in Mind, 52, 1943, pp. 47 ff. After it was written I received Carnap's Introduction to Semantics, 1942, where he uses the term 'comprehensive', which seems preferable to 'embracing'. See especially § 30 of Carnap's book.*

In 'What is Dialectic?' a number of problems are treated which are only touched upon in the present book; especially the transition from Kant to Hegel, Hegel's dialectics, and his philosophy of identity. Although a few statements from that paper have been repeated here, the two presentations of the problems are in the main complementary to one another. Cp. also the next notes, down to note 36.

33. Cp. Selections, xxviii (the German quotation; for similar quotations see WW, iv, 618, and Werke 1832-1887, vol. vi, 259). For the idea of dc reinforced dogmatism mentioned in this paragraph, cp. 'What is Dialectic?', p. 417, and Conjectures and Refutations , p. 327; see also note 51 to chapter 11.

34. Cp. 'What is Dialectic?' especially from p. 414, where the problem, 'How can our mind grasp the world?' is introduced, down to p. 420 (Conjectures and Refutations, pp. 325-30).

35. 'Everything actual is an Idea', says Hegel. Cp. Selections, 103 (= WW, iii, 116); and from the perfection of the Idea, moral positivism follows. See also Selections, 388 (= WW, xi, 70), i.e. the last passage quoted in the text to note 8; see, furthermore, § 6 of the Encyclopedia, and the Preface as well as § 270L of the Philosophy of Right. — I need hardly add that the 'Great Dictator' in the previous paragraph is an allusion to Chaplin's film.

Hegel's philosophy of identity shows, of course, the influence of the mystic theory of knowledge of Aristotle — the doctrine of the unity of the knowing subject and the known object. (Cp. notes 33 to chapter 11, 59-70 to chapter 10, notes 4, 6, and 29-32, and 58, to chapter 24.)

To my remarks in the text about Hegel's philosophy of identity, it may be added that Hegel believed, with most of the philosophers of his time, that logic is the theory of thinking or of reasoning. (See 'What is Dialectic?' p. 418.) This, together with the philosophy of identity, has the consequence that logic is considered as the theory of thought, or of reason, or of the Ideas or notions, or of the Real. From the further premise that thought develops dialectically, Hegel can deduce that reason, the Ideas or notions, and the Real, all develop dialectically; and he further gets Logic = Dialectics and Logic = Theory of Reality. This latter doctrine is known as Hegel's pan-logism.

On the other hand, Hegel can derive from these premises that notions develop dialectically, i.e. are capable of a kind of self-creation and self-development, out of nothing. (Hegel begins this development with the Idea of Being which presupposes its opposite, i.e. Nothing, and creates the transition from Nothing to Being, i.e. Becoming.) There are two motives for this attempt to develop notions out of nothing. The one is the mistaken idea that philosophy has to start without any presuppositions. (This idea has been recently reaffirmed by Husserl; it is discussed in chapter 24; cp. note 8 to that chapter, and text.) This leads Hegel to start from 'nothing'. The other motive is the hope of giving a systematic development and justification of Kant's Table of Categories. Kant had made the remark that the first two categories of each group are opposed to each other, and that the third is a kind of synthesis of the first. This remark (and the influence of Fichte) led Hegel to hope that he could derive all categories 'dialectically', out of nothing, and thereby justify the 'necessity' of all the categories.

37. Cp. Selections, xvi (= Werke, 1832-1887, vi, 153-4).

38. Cp. Anderson, Nationalism, etc., 294. — The king promised the constitution on May 22, 1815. — The story of the 'constitution' and the court-physician seems to have been told of most of the princes of the period (for example, of the emperor Francis I as well as his successor Ferdinand I of Austria). — The next quotation is from Selections, 246 f. (= Encycl. 1870, pp. 437-8).

41. For the paradox of freedom, cp. note 43 (1) below; the four paragraphs in the text before note 42 to chapter 6; notes 4 and 6 to chapter 7, and note 7 to chapter 24; and the passages in the text. (See also note 20 to chapter 17.) For Rousseau's restatement of the paradox of freedom, cp. the Social Contract, Book I, chapter VIII, second paragraph. For Kant's solution, cp. note 4 to chapter 6. Hegel frequently alludes to this Kantian solution (cp. Kant's Metaphysics of Morals, Introduction to the Theory of Law, § C; Works, ed. by Cassirer, VII, p. 31); for example in his Philosophy of Law, § 29; and § 270, where, following Aristotle and Burke (cp. note 43 to chapter 6 and text), Hegel argues against the theory (due to Lycophron and Kant) that 'the state's specific function consists in the protection of everybody's life, property, and caprice', as he sneeringly puts it.

For the two quotations at the beginning and end of this paragraph, cp. Selections, 248 £, and 249 i=Encycl. 1870, p. 439).

43. (1) For the following quotations, cp. Selections, 251 (§ 540 = Encycl. 1870, p. 441); 25 If (first sentence of § 541 = Encycl. 1870, p. 442); and 253 f (beginning of § 542, italics partly mine = Encycl. 1870, p. 443). These are the passages from the Encyclopedia. The 'parallel passage' from the Philosophy of Law is: § 273 (last paragraph) to § 281. The two quotations are from § 275, and from § 279, end of first paragraph (italics mine). For a similarly dubious use of the paradox of freedom, cp. Selections, 394 (= WW, xi, 76): 'If the principle of regard for the individual will is recognized as the only basis of political liberty... then we have, properly speaking, no Constitution' See also Selections, 400 f (= WW, xi, 80-81), and 449 (see the Philosophy of Law, § 274).

Hegel himself summarizes his twist (Selections, 401 = WW, xi, 82): 'At an earlier stage of the discussion, we established...first, the Idea of Freedom as the absolute and final aim... We then recognized the State as the moral Whole and the Reality of Freedom...'Thus we begin with freedom and end with the totalitarian state. One can hardly present the twist more cynically.

(2) For another example of a dialectic twist, viz., that of reason into passion and violence, see end of (g) in section IV, below, of the present chapter (text to note 84). Particularly interesting in this connection is Hegel's criticism of Plato. (See also notes 7 and 8 above, and text.) Hegel, paying lip-service to all modern and 'Christian' values, not only to freedom, but even to the 'subjective freedom' of the individual, criticizes Plato's holism or collectivism (Phil, of Law, § 185): 'The principle of the self-sufficient... personality of the individual, the principle of subjective freedom, is denied its right by... Plato. This principle dawned... in the Christian religion and... in the Roman World.' This criticism is excellent, and it proves that Hegel knew what Plato was about; in fact, Hegel's reading of Plato agrees very well with my own. For the untrained reader of Hegel, this passage might even prove the injustice of branding Hegel as a collectivist. But we have only to turn to § 70L of the same work in order to see that Plato's most radical collectivist saying, 'You are created for the sake of the whole, and not the whole for the sake of you', is fully subscribed to by Hegel, who writes: 'A single person, it hardly needs saying, is something subordinate, and as such he must dedicate himself to the ethical whole', i.e. the state. This is Hegel's 'individualism'.

But why, then, does he criticize Plato? Why does he emphasize the importance of 'subjective freedom'? §§ 316 and 317 of the Philosophy of Law give an answer to this question. Hegel is convinced that revolutions can be avoided only by granting the people, as a kind of safety valve, a certain small amount of freedom which should not go beyond an irrelevant opportunity to give vent to their feelings. Thus he writes (op. cit., §§316, 317L, italics mine): 'In our day... the principle of subjective freedom is of great importance and significance... Everybody wishes to participate in discussions and deliberations. But once he has had his say,... his subjectivity is gratified and he will put up with a lot. In France, freedom of speech has proved far less dangerous than silence imposed by force; with the latter... men have to swallow everything, while if they are permitted to argue, they have an outlet as well as some satisfaction; and in this way, a thing may be pushed ahead more easily.' It must be difficult to surpass the cynicism exhibited by this discussion in which Hegel gives vent, so freely, to his feeling concerning 'subjective freedom' or, as he often calls it so solemnly, 'the principle of the modern world'.

To sum up. Hegel agrees with Plato completely, except that he criticizes Plato's failure to provide the ruled with the illusion of 'subjective freedom'.

44. The astonishing thing is that these despicable services could be successful, that even serious people have been deceived by Hegel's dialectical method. As an example it may be mentioned that even such a critical and enlightened fighter for freedom and reason as C. E. Vaughan fell a victim to Hegel's hypocrisy, when he expressed his belief in Hegel's 'belief in freedom and progress which, on Hegel's own showing, is... the essence of his creed'. (Cp. C. E. Vaughan, Studies in the History of Political Philosophy, vol. II, 296; italics mine.) It must be admitted that Vaughan criticized Hegel's 'undue leaning towards the established order' (p. 178); he even said of Hegel that 'no one could... be more ready... to assure the world that the most retrograde and oppressive institutions... must... be accepted as indisputably rational' (p. 295); yet he trusted 'Hegel's own showing' so much that he took features of this kind as mere 'extravagances' (p. 295), as 'shortcomings for which it is easy to allow' (p. 182). Moreover, his strongest and perfectly justified comment, that Hegel 'discovers the last word of political wisdom, the coping stone... of history, in the Prussian Constitution' (p. 182), was not fated to be published without an antidote restoring the reader's confidence in Hegel; for the editor of Vaughan's posthumous Studies destroys the force of Vaughan's comment by adding in a foot-note, with reference to a passage from Hegel which he assumes to be the one alluded to by Vaughan (he does not refer to the passage quoted here in the text to notes 47, 48, and 49), 'but perhaps the passage hardly justifies the comment... '

45. See note 36 to this chapter. An indication of this dialectical theory may be found as early as in Aristotle's Physics, I, 5.

46. I am greatly indebted to E. H. Gombrich, who permitted me to adopt the main ideas of this paragraph from his excellent criticism of my presentation of Hegel (communicated to me by letter).

For Hegel's view that 'the Absolute Spirit manifests itself in the history of the world', see his Philosophy of Law, § 259L. For his identification of the 'Absolute Spirit' with the 'World Spirit', see op. cit., § 339L. For the view that perfection is the aim of Providence, and for Hegel's attack on the (Kantian) view that the plan of Providence is inscrutable, see op. cit. , § 343. (For M. B. Foster's interesting counterattacks, see note 19 to chapter 25.) For Hegel's use of (dialectical) syllogisms, see especially the Encyclopedia, § 181 ('the syllogism is the rational, and everything rational'); § 198, where the state is described as a triad of syllogisms; and §§ 575 to 577, where Hegel's whole system is presented as such a triad of syllogisms. According to this last passage, we might infer that 'history' is the realm of the 'second syllogism' (§ 576); cp. Selections, 309 f. For the first passage (from section III of the Introduction to the Philosophy of History), see Selections, 348 f. — For the next passage (from the Encyclopedia) see Selections, 262 f.

47. Cp. Selections, 442 (last paragraph = WW, xi, 119-20). The last quotation in this paragraph is from the same place.

Concerning the three steps, cp. Selections, 360, 362, 398 (= WW, xi, 44, 46, 79-80). See also Hegel's Philosophy of History (transl. by J. Sibree, 1857, quoted from the edition of 1914), p. 110: 'The East knew... only that One is free; the Greek and the Roman World, that some are free; the German World knows that All are free. The first political form therefore which we observe in History is Despotism, the second Democracy and Aristocracy, the third Monarchy.'

(For the further treatment of the three steps, cp. op. cit., pp. 117, 260, 354.)

The presentation in the text simplifies the matter somewhat; for Hegel first divides (Phil, oj Hist., 356 ff.) the Germanic World into three periods which he describes (p. 358) as the 'Kingdoms of the Father, the Son and the Spirit'; and the kingdom of the Spirit is again subdivided into the three periods mentioned in the text.

49. For the following three passages, cp. the Philosophy of History, pp. 354, 476, 476-7.

53. Masaryk has been described sometimes as a 'philosopher king'. But he was certainly not a ruler of the kind Plato would have liked; for he was a democrat. He was very interested in Plato, but he idealized Plato and interpreted him democratically. His nationalism was a reaction to national oppression, and he always fought against nationalist excesses. It may be mentioned that his first printed work in the Czech language was an article on Plato's patriotism. (Cp. K. Capek's biography of Masaryk, the chapter on his period as a university student.) Masaryk's Czechoslovakia was probably one of the best and most democratic states that ever existed; but in spite of all that, it was built on the principle of the national state, on a principle which in this world is inapplicable. An international federation in the Danube basin might have prevented much.

54. See chapter 7. For the quotation from Rousseau, later in the paragraph, cp. the Social Contract, book I, ch. VII (end of second paragraph). For Hegel's view concerning the doctrine of the sovereignty of the people, see the passage from § 279 of the Philosophy of Law quoted in text to note 61 to this chapter.

55. Cp. Herder, quoted by Zimmern, Modern Political Doctrines (1939), p. 165 f. (The passage quoted in my text is not characteristic of Herder's empty verbalism, which was criticized by Kant.)

56. Cp. note 7 to chapter 9.

For the two quotations from Kant, further on in this paragraph, cp. Works (ed. by E. Cassirer), vol. IV, p. 179; and p. 195.

It may be remarked that an originally anti-German feeling is common to many of the founders of German nationalism; which shows how far nationalism is based upon a feeling of inferiority. (Cp. notes 61 and 70 to this chapter.) As an example, Anderson says ( op. cit, 79) about E. M. Arndt, later a famous nationalist: 'When Arndt travelled through Europe in 1798-9, he called himself a Swede because, as he said, the name German "stinks in the world"; not, he added characteristically, through the fault of the common people.' Hegemann insists rightly (op. cit. ,118) that the German spiritual leaders of the time turned especially against the barbarism of Prussia, and he quotes Winckelmann, who said, 'I would rather be a Turkish eunuch than a Prussian'; and Lessing, who said, 'Prussia is the most slavish country in Europe'; and he refers to Goethe, who passionately hoped that relief would come from Napoleon. And Hegemann, who is also the author of a book against Napoleon, adds: 'Napoleon was a despot;... whatever we have to say against him, it must be admitted that by his victory of Jena he had forced the reactionary state of Frederick to introduce a few reforms that had been long overdue.'

An interesting judgement on the Germany of 1800 can be found in Kant's Anthropology (1800), where he deals, not quite seriously, with national characteristics. Kant writes (Works, vol. VIII, 213,211,212; italics mine) of the German 'His bad side is the compulsion to imitate others and his low opinion of himself with respect to his own originality...; and especially a certain pedantic inclination to classify himself painstakingly in relation to other citizens, according to a system of rank and of prerogatives. In this system of rank, he is inexhaustible in the invention of titles, and thus slavish out of pedantry... Of all civilized peoples, the German submits most easily and most lastingly to the government under which he happens to live, and he is further removed than any other from a love of change and from resistance to the established order. His character is a kind of phlegmatic reason.'

58. Cp. Kant's Works, vol. VIII, 516. Kant, who had been immediately ready to help when Fichte appealed to him as an unknown author in distress, hesitated for seven years after the anonymous publication of Fichte 's first book to speak his mind about Fichte, although he was pressed to do so from various sides, for example by Fichte himself, who posed as the fulfiller of the Kantian promise. Ultimately, Kant published his Public Explanation Regarding Fichte, as a reply 'to the solemn demand made by a reviewer in the name of the public', that he should speak his mind. He declared that, in his view, 'Fichte 's system was totally untenable'; and he declined to have anything to do with a philosophy which consisted of 'barren subtleties'. And after praying (as quoted in the text) that God may protect us from our friends, Kant goes on to say: 'For there may be also... fraudulent and perfidious friends who are scheming for our ruin, although they speak the language of benevolence; one cannot be sufficiently cautious in order to avoid the traps they set for us.' If Kant, a most balanced, benevolent, and conscientious person, was moved to say things such as these, then we have every reason to consider his judgement seriously. But I have seen so far no history of philosophy which clearly states that, in Kant's opinion, Fichte was a dishonest impostor, although I have seen many histories of philosophy that try to explain away Schopenhauer's indictments, for example, by hinting that he was envious.

But Kant's and Schopenhauer's accusations are by no means isolated. A. von Feuerbach (in a letter of January 30th, 1799; cp. Schopenhauer's Works, vol. V, 102) expressed himself as strongly as Schopenhauer; Schiller arrived at a similar opinion, and so did Goethe; and Nicolovius called Fichte a 'sycophant and a deceiver'. (Cp. also Hegemann, op. cit., pp. 119 ff)

It is astonishing to see that, thanks to a conspiracy of noise, a man like Fichte succeeded in perverting the teaching of his 'master', m spite of Kant's protests, and in Kant's lifetime. This happened only a hundred years ago and can easily be checked by anybody who takes the trouble to read Kant's and Fichte 's letters, and Kant's public announcements; and it shows that my theory of Plato's perversion of the teaching of Socrates is by no means so fantastic as it may appear to Platonists. Socrates was dead then, and he had left no letters. (Were the comparison not one that does too much honour to Fichte and Hegel, one would be tempted to say: without Plato, there could have been no Aristotle; and without Fichte, no Hegel.)

61. Cp. Philosophy of Law, § 279; for the next quotation, se Selections, 256 f. (= Encycl. 1870, p. 446). The attack upon England, further below in the paragraph, follows on p. 257 ( = Encycl. 1870, p. 447). For Hegel's reference to the German empire, cp. Philosophy of History, p. 475 (see also note 77 to this chapter). — Feelings of inferiority, especially in relation to England, and clever appeals to such feelings, play a considerable part in the story of the rise of nationalism; cp. also notes 57 and 70 to this chapter. For other passages on England, see the next note and note 70 to this chapter, and text. (The words 'arts and science' are italicized by me.)

62. Hegel's disparaging reference to merely 'formal' rights, to merely 'formal' freedom, to a merely 'formal' constitution, etc., is interesting, since it is the dubious source of the modern Marxist criticism of merely 'formal' democracies which offer merely 'formal' freedom. Cp. note 19 to chapter 17 and text.

A few characteristic passages in which Hegel denounces merely 'formal' freedom, etc., may be quoted here. They are all taken from the Philosophy of History — (p. 471): 'Liberalism sets up, in opposition to all this' (i.e. to the Prussian 'holistic' restoration), 'the atomistic principle which insists upon the sway of individual wills, maintaining that all governments should... have their' (the people's) 'explicit sanction. In thus asserting the formal side of Freedom — this mere abstraction — the party in question makes it impossible firmly to establish any political organization.' — (p. 474): 'The Constitution of England is a complex of mere particular rights and particular privileges,... Of institutions characterized by real freedom' (as opposed to merely formal freedom) 'there are nowhere fewer than in England. In point of private rights and the freedom of possessions they present an incredible deficiency: sufficient proof of which is afforded in the rights of primogeniture which make it necessary to provide (by purchase or otherwise) military or ecclesiastical appointments for the younger sons of the aristocracy.' See further the discussion of the French declaration of the Rights of Man and Kant's principles on pp. 462 ff. with its reference to 'nothing more than formal Will' and the 'principle of Freedom' that 'remained merely formal'; and contrast this, for example, with the remarks on p. 354, which show that the German Spirit is 'true' and 'absolute' freedom: 'The German Spirit is the Spirit of the new World. Its aim is the realization of absolute Truth as the unlimited self-determination of Freedom; of that Freedom which has its own absolute form itself as its purport.' If I were to use the term 'formal freedom' in a disparaging sense, then I should apply it to Hegel's 'subjective freedom', as treated by him in Philosophy of Law, § 317L (quoted at the end of note 43).

63. Cp. Anderson, Nationalism, etc., p. 279. For Hegel's reference to England (quoted in brackets at the end of this paragraph), cp. Selections, 263 (= Encycl. 1870, p. 452); see also note 70 to this chapter.

64. This quotation is from the Philosophy of Law, § 331. For the following two quotations, cp. Selections, 403 (= WW, xi, 84) and 267 f. (= Encycl. 1870, pp. 455-56). For the quotation further below (illustrating juridical positivism), cp. Selections, 449 (i.e. Phil, of Law, § 274). With the theory of world dominion, cp. also the theory of domination and submission, and of slavery, outlined in note 25 to chapter 11, and text. For the theory of national spirits or wills or geniuses asserting themselves in history, i.e. in the history of wars see text to notes 69 and 77.

In connection with the historical theory of the nation, cp. the following remarks of Renan (quoted by A. Zimmern in Modern Political Doctrines, pp. 190 f ): 'To forget and — I will venture to say — to get one's history wrong, are essential factors in the making of a nation [or, as we now know, of a totalitarian state]; and thus the advance of historical studies is often a danger to nationality... Now it is of the essence of a nation that all individuals should have much in common, and further that they should all have forgotten much.' One would hardly believe that Renan is a nationalist; but he is, although one of the democratic type; and his nationalism is typically Hegelian; for he writes (p. 202): 'A nation is a soul, a spiritual principle.'

65. Haeckel can hardly be taken seriously as a philosopher or scientist. He called himself a free thinker, but his thinking was not sufficiently independent to prevent him from demanding in 1914 'the following fruits of victory': '(1) Emancipation from England's tyranny: (2) the invasion of the British pirate state by the German navy and army; the capture of London; (3) the partitioning of Belgium'; and so forth for quite a time. (In: Das Monistische Jahrhundert, 1914, No. 31/32, pp. 65 f , quoted in Thus Spake Germany, 270.)

W. Schallmayer's prize essay has the title: Heredity and Selection in the Life of the Nations. (See also note 71 to chapter 10, above.)

66. For Bergson's Hegelianism, cp. note 25 to this chapter. For Shaw's characterization of the religion of creative evolution, cp. Back to Methuselah, the last section of the Preface ('My Own Part in The Matter'): '... as the conception of Creative Evolution developed, I saw that we were at last within reach of a faith which complied with the first condition of all the religions that have ever taken hold of humanity: namely that it must be, first and fundamentally, a science of metabiology.'

67. Cp. A. Zimmern's excellent Introduction to his Modern Political Doctrines, p. xviii. — Regarding Platonic totalitarianism, cp. text to note 8 to this chapter. For the theory of master and slave, and of domination and submission, cp. note 25 to chapter 11; see also note 74 to the present chapter.

70. Cp. Selections, 435 f. (= WW, xi, 114). For the problem of inferiority, cp. also notes 57 and 61 to this chapter, and text. For the other passage on England, see notes 61-63, and text to this chapter. A very interesting passage (Phil, of Law, § 290L) containing a classical formulation of holism shows that Hegel not only thought in terms of holism or collectivism and power, but also that he saw the applicability of these principles towards the organization of the proletariat. 'The lower classes', Hegel writes, 'have been left more or less unorganized. And yet, it is of the utmost importance that they should be organized, for only in this way can they become powerful. Without organization, they are nothing but a heap, an aggregate of atoms.' Hegel comes pretty close to Marx in this passage.

71. The passage is from H. Freyer, Pallas Athene (1935), quoted by A. Kolnai, The War against the West (1938), p. 417. I am greatly indebted to Kolnai's book, which has made it possible for me to quote in the remaining part of this chapter a considerable number of authors who would otherwise have been inaccessible to me. (I have, however, not always followed the wording of Kolnai's translations.)

For the characterization of Freyer as one of the leading sociologists of contemporary Germany, cp. F. A. von Hayek, Freedom and the Economic System (Public Policy Pamphlet No. 29, 2nd impression, 1940), p. 30.

For the four passages in this paragraph from Hegel's Philosophy of Law, §§ 331, 340, 342L (cp. also 331 f) and 340, see Selections, 466, 467, 465, 468. For the passages from the Encyclopedia, cp. Selections, 260 f. (= Encycl. 1870, pp. 449-50). (The last sentence quoted is a different version of the first sentence of § 546.)

72. Cp. Philosophy of Law, § 257, i.e. Selections, 443. For the next three quotations, see Philosophy of Law, §§ 334 and 339L, i.e. Selections, 467. For the last quotation in this paragraph, cp. Hegel's Philosophy of Law, §§ 330L and 333.

74. Quoted by Kolnai, op. cit, 418. — For Heraclitus, cp. text to note 10 to chapter 2. — For Haiser, see Kolnai, loc. cit.; cp. also Hegel's theory of slavery, mentioned in note 25 to chapter 11. — For the concluding quotation of this paragraph, cp. Selections, 467, i.e. Philosophy of Law, 334. For the 'war of defence' that turns into a 'war of conquest', see op. cit., § 326.

75. For all the passages from Hegel in this paragraph, cp. Selections, 426 f (= WW, xi, 105-6). (Italics mine.) For another passage expressing the postulate that world-history must overrule morals, see Philosophy of Law, § 345. For E. Meyer, cp. end of note 15 (2) to chapter 10.

76. See Philosophy of Law, § 317 f; cp. Selections, 461; for similar passages, see § 316: 'Public opinion as it exists is a continuous self-contradiction'; see also § 301, i.e. Selections, 456, and § 318L. (For further views of Hegel on public opinion, cp. also text to note 84 to this chapter.) — For Haiser's remark, cp. Kolnai, op. cit., 234.

77. Cp. Selections, 464, 465, for the passages from the Philosophy of Law, §§ 324 and 324L. For the next passages from the Philosophy of History, cp. Selections, 436 f. (= WW, xi, 114- 15). (The next passage quoted continues characteristically: '... naturally dead in itself, as e.g. the German Imperial Cities, the German Imperial Constitution.' With this, cp. note 61 to this chapter, and text.)

79. For the quotations from Kaufmann, Banse, Ludendorff, Scheler, Freyer, Lenz, and Jung, cp. Kolnai, op. cit., 411, 411 f, 412, 411, 417, 411, and 420.— For the quotation from J. G. Fichte's Addresses to the German Nation (1808), cp. the German edition of 1871 (edited by I. H. Fichte), pp. 49 f; see also A. Zimmern, Modern Political Doctrines, 170 f. — For Spengler's repetition, see his Decline of the West, I, p. 12; for Rosenberg's repetition, cp. his Myth of the Twentieth Century (1935), p. 143; see also my note 50 to chapter 8, and Rader, No Compromise (1939), 116.

87. Cp. Selections, p. 100: 'If I neglect all the determinations of an object, then nothing remains.' — For Heidegger's is Metaphysics! cp. Carnap, Erkenntnis, 2, 229. For Heidegger's relation to Husserl and Scheler, cp. J. Kraft, From Husserl to Heidegger (2nd German edn, 1957). Heidegger recognizes that his sentences are meaningless: 'Question and answer concerning nothingness are in themselves equally nonsensical', Heidegger writes (cp. Erkenntnis, 2, 231). What could be said, from the point of view of Wittgenstein's Tractatus, against this kind of philosophy which admits that it talks nonsense — but deeply significant nonsense? (Cp. note 51 (1) to chapter 11.) G. Schneeberger, Nachlese zu Heidegger, 1962, contains a collection of documents on Heidegger's political activity.

89. For Jaspers, cp. Kolnai, op. cit., 270 f. Kolnai (p. 282) calls Jaspers 'Heidegger's lesser brother'. I cannot agree with that. For, as opposed to Heidegger, Jaspers has undoubtedly written books which contain much of interest, even books which contain much that is based on experience, for instance his General Psycho-Pathology. But I may quote here a few passages from an early work, his Psychology of World-Views (first published in 1919; I quote from the third German edn, 1925), which show that Jaspers' world-views were far advanced, at any rate, before Heidegger took to writing. 'To visualize the life of man, one would have to see how he lives in the Moment. The Moment is the sole reality, it is reality in itself, in the life of the soul. The Moment that has been lived is the Last, the Warm-Blooded, the Immediate, the Living, the Bodily-Present, the Totality of the Real, the only Concrete Thing... Man finds Existence and the Absolute ultimately in the Moment alone.' (p. 112.) — (From the chapter on Enthusiastic Attitude , p. 112): 'Wherever Enthusiasm is the absolute leading motive, i.e. wherever one lives in Reality and for Reality, and still dares and risks all, there one may well speak of Heroism: of heroic Love, heroic Strife, heroic Work, etc. § 5. The Enthusiastic Attitude is Love...' — (Subsection 2, p. 128): 'Compassion is not Love...' — (p. 127): 'This is why Love is cruel, ruthless; and why it is believed in, by the genuine Lover, only if it is so.' — (pp. 256 ff.): 'III. Single Marginal Situations... (A) Strife. Strife is a fundamental form of all Existence... The reactions to the Marginal Situations of Strife are the following:... 2. Man s lack of understanding of the fact that Strife is Ultimate: He skulks...' And so on. We always find the same picture: a hysterical romanticism, combined with a brutal barbarism and the professorial pedantry of sub-sections and sub-sub- sections.

90. Cp. Kolnai, op. cit., 208.

For my remark on the 'philosophy of the gambler', cp. O. Spengler (The Hour of Decision. Germany and World-Historical Evolution. — German edn, 1933, p. 230; quoted in Thus Spake Germany, 28): 'He whose sword compels victory here will be lord of the world. The dice are there, ready for this stupendous game. Who dares to throw them?'

Of the gangster philosophy, a book by the very talented author, E. von Salomon, is perhaps even more characteristic. I quote a few passages from this book. The Outlaws (1930; the passages quoted are from pp. 105, 73, 63, 307, 73, 367): 'Satanic lust! Am I not one with my gun?... The first lust of man is destruction... They shot quite indiscriminately, just because it was good fun... We are free of the burden of plan, method or system... What we wanted we did not know, and what we knew we did not want... My greatest lust was always for destruction.' And so on. (Cp. also Hegemann, op. cit., 171.)

91. Cp. Kolnai, op. cit., 313.

92. For Ziegler, cp. Kolnai, op. cit, 398.

93. This quotation is from Schopenhauer, Grundprobleme (4th edn, 1890), Introduction to the first edition (1840), p. xix. — Hegel's remark on 'the most lofty depth' (or 'the most elevated depth') is from the Jahrbuecher d. wiss. Lit, 1827, No. 7; it is quoted by Schopenhauer, op. cit. — The concluding quotation is from Schopenhauer, op. cit., xviii.

General Note to the Chapters on Marx. Wherever possible, I refer in these notes to Capital or to H.o.M. or to both. I use Capital as abbreviation for the Everyman Double Volume Edition of K. Marx, Capital, translated by E. and C. Paul. — H.o.M. stands for a Handbook of Marxism, edited by E. Burns, 1935, but references to complete editions of the texts have always been added. For quotations from Marx and Engels, I refer to the Moscow standard edition (Gesamtausgabe, abbreviated GA), published from 1927 onwards and edited by D. Ryazanow and others but still incomplete. For quotations from Lenin, I refer to the Little Lenin Library, published by Martin Lawrence, later Lawrence and Wishart, abbreviated L.L.L. The later volumes of Capital are quoted as Das Kapital (of which vol. I was first published in 1867); the references are to vol. II, 1885, or to vol. Ill, part 1, and vol. Ill, part 2 (quoted as III/l and III/2), both 1894. 1 wish to make it quite clear that although I refer where possible to the translations mentioned above, I do not always adopt their wording.

1. Cp. V. Pareto, Treatise on General Sociology, § 1843. (English transl.: The Mind and Society, 1935, vol. Ill, p. 1281; cp. also text to note 65 to chapter 10.) Pareto writes (pp. 1281 f.): 'The art of government lies in finding ways to take advantage of such sentiments, not wasting one's energy in futile efforts to destroy them; very frequently the sole effect of the latter course is to strengthen them. The person capable of freeing himself from the blind domination of his own sentiments will be able to utilize the sentiments of other people for his own ends... This may be said in general of the relation between ruler and ruled. The statesman who is of greatest service to himself and to his party is the man without prejudice who knows how to profit by the prejudices of others.' The prejudices Pareto has in mind are of diverse character — nationalism, love of freedom, humanitarianism. And it may be just as well to remark that Pareto, though he has freed himself from many prejudices, has certainly not succeeded in freeing himself from all of them. This can be seen in nearly every page he writes, especially, of course, where he speaks of what he describes not inappropriately as 'the humanitarian religion'. His own prejudice is the anti-humanitarian religion. Had he seen that his choice was not between prejudice and freedom from prejudice, but only between the humanitarian prejudice and the anti-humanitarian prejudice, he might perhaps have felt a little less confident of his superiority. (For the problem of prejudices, cp. note 8 (1) to chapter 24, and text.)

Pareto's ideas concerning the 'art of government' are very old; they go back at least to Plato's uncle Critias, and have played their part in the Platonic school tradition (as pointed out in note 18 to chapter 8).

2. (1) Fichte's and Hegel's ideas led to the principle of the national state and of national self- determination, a reactionary principle in which, however, a fighter for the open society such as Masaryk sincerely believed, and which the democrat Wilson adopted. (For Wilson, cp. for instance Modern Political Doctrines, ed. by A. Zimmern, 1939, pp. 223 ff.) This principle is obviously inapplicable on this earth, and especially in Europe, where the nations (i.e. linguistic groups) are so densely packed that it is quite impossible to disentangle them. The terrible effect of Wilson's attempt to apply this romantic principle to European politics should be clear by now to everybody. That the Versailles settlement was harsh, is a myth; that Wilson's principles were not adhered to, is another myth. The fact is that such principles could not be more consistently applied; and Versailles failed mainly because of the attempt to apply Wilson's inapplicable principles. (For all this, cp. note 7 to chapter 9, and text to notes 51-64 to chapter 12.)

(2) In connection with the Hegelian character of Marxism mentioned in the text in this paragraph, I give here a list of important views which Marxism takes over from Hegelianism. My treatment of Marx is not based on this list, since I do not intend to treat him just as another Hegelian, but rather as a serious investigator who can, and must, answer for himself This is the list, ordered approximately according to the importance of the various views for Marxism.

(a) Historicism: The method of a science of society is the study of history, and especially of the tendencies inherent in the historical development of mankind.

(b) Historical relativism: What is a law in one historical period need not be a law in another historical period. (Hegel maintained that what is true in one period need not be true in another.)

(c) There is an inherent law of progress in historical development.

(d) The development is one towards more freedom and reason, although the instrumentality of bringing this about is not our reasonable planning but rather such irrational forces as our passions and our self-interests. (Hegel calls this 'the cunning of reason'.)

(e) Moral positivism, or in Marx's case, moral 'futurism'. (This term is explained in chapter 22.)

(f) Class consciousness is one of the instruments by which the development propels itself (Hegel operates with the consciousness of the nation, the 'national Spirit' or 'national Genius'.)

(g) Methodological essentialism. Dialectics.

(h) The following Hegelian ideas play a part in Marx's writings but have become more important with later Marxists.

(h1) The distinction between merely 'formal' freedom or merely 'formal' democracy and 'real' or 'economic' freedom or 'economic' democracy, etc.; in connection with this, there is a certain 'ambivalent' attitude towards liberalism, i.e. a mixture of love and hate.

(h2) Collectivism.

In the following chapters, (a) is again the main theme. In connection with (a) and (b), see also note 13 to this chapter. For (b), cp. chapters 22-24. For (c), cp. chapters 22 and 25. For (d), cp. chapter 22 (and regarding Hegel's 'cunning of reason', cp. text to note 84 to chapter 12). For (f), cp. chapters 16 and 19. For (g), cp. notes 4 to the present chapter, 6 to chapter 17, 13 to chapter 15, 15 to chapter 19, and notes 20-24 to chapter 20, and text. For (h1), cp. note 19 to chapter 17. (h2) has its influence on Marx's anti-psychologism (cp. text to note 16 to chapter 14); it is under the influence of the Platonic-Hegelian doctrine of the superiority of the state over the individual that Marx develops his theory that even the 'consciousness' of the individual is determined by social conditions. Yet, fundamentally, Marx was an individualist; his main interest was to help suffering human individuals. Thus collectivism as such certainly does not play an important part in Marx's own writings. (Apart from his emphasis upon a collective class consciousness, mentioned under (f); cp., for example, note 4 to chapter 18.) But it plays its part in Marxist practice.

3. In Capital (387-9), Marx makes some interesting remarks both on Plato's theory of the division of labour (cp. note 29 to chapter 5 and text) and on the caste character of Plato's state. (Marx refers, however, only to Egypt and not to Sparta; cp. note 27 to chapter 4.) In this connection, Marx quotes also an interesting passage from Socrates' Busiris, 15 f , 224/5, where Isocrates first proffers arguments for the division of labour very similar to those of Plato (text to note 29 to chapter 5); Isocrates then continues: 'The Egyptians... were so successful that the most celebrated philosophers who discuss such topics extol the constitution of Egypt above all others, and that the Spartans... govern their own city in such an excellent manner because they have copied the ways of the Egyptians.' I think it most probable that Isocrates refers here to Plato; and he may in turn be referred to by Grantor, when he spoke of those who accuse Plato of becoming a disciple of the Egyptians, as mentioned in note 27 (3) to chapter 4.

4. Or, 'intelligence destroying'; cp. text to note 68 to chapter 12. For dialectics in general, and Hegelian dialectics in particular, cp. chapter 12, especially text to notes 28-33. With Marx's dialectics, I do not intend to deal in this book, since I have dealt with it elsewhere. (Cp. 'What is Dialectic?', Mind, N.S., vol. 49, 1940, pp. 403 ff.; or, revised, in Conjectures and Refutations, pp. 312 ff.) I consider Marx's dialectics, like Hegel's, a rather dangerous muddle; but its analysis can be avoided here, especially since the criticism of his historicism covers all that may be taken seriously in his dialectics.

5. Cp., for instance, the quotation in the text to note 11 to this chapter.

6. Utopianism is first attacked by Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto, III, 3. (Cp. H.o.M., 55 ff. = GA, Series I, vol. 6, 553-5.) For Marx's attacks upon the 'bourgeois economists' who 'try to reconcile... political economy with the claims of the proletariat', attacks directed especially against Mill and other members of the Comtist school, cp. especially Capital, 868 (against Mill; see also note 14 to this chapter), and 870 (against the Comtist Revue Positiviste; see also text to note 21 to chapter 18). For the whole problem of social technology versus historicism, and of piecemeal social engineering versus Utopian social engineering, cp. especially chapter 9, above. (See also the notes 9 to chapter 3; 18 (3) to chapter 5; and 1 to chapter 9; with references to M. Eastman's Marxism: Is it Science?)

7. (1) The two quotations from Lenin are taken from Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism (2nd edn, 1937), pp. 650 f, who say, in a note, that the second of the quotations is from a speech made by Lenin in May, 1918. It is most interesting to see how quickly Lenin grasped the situation. On the eve of his party's rise to power, in August, 1917, when he published his book State and Revolution, he was still a pure historicist. Not only was he as yet unaware of the most difficult problems involved in the task of constructing a new society; he even believed, with most Marxists, that the problems were non-existent, or that they would be solved by the process of history. Cp. especially the passages from State and Revolution in H.o.M., pp. 757f (= Lenin, State and Revolution, L.L.L., vol. 14, 77-9), where Lenin emphasizes the simplicity of the problems of organization and administration in the various phases of the evolving Communist society. 'All that is required', he writes, 'is that they should work equally, should regularly do their share of work, and should receive equal pay. The accounting and control necessary for this have been simplified' (italics in the original) 'by capitalism to the utmost' They can thus be simply taken over by the workers, since these methods of control are 'within reach of anybody who can read and write, and knows the first four rules of arithmetic' These astonishingly naive statements are representative. (We find similar views expressed in Germany and in England; cp. this note, under (2).) They must be contrasted with Lenin's speeches made a few months later. They show how free the prophetic 'scientific socialist' was from any foreboding of the problems and disasters ahead. (I mean the disaster of the period of war-communism, that period which was the outcome of this prophetic and anti-technological Marxism.) But they show also Lenin's capability of finding, and of admitting to himself, the mistakes made. He abandoned Marxism in practice, although not in theory. Compare also Lenin's chapter V, sections 2 and 3,H.o.M., pp. 742 ff. (= State and Revolution, 67-73), for the purely historicist, i.e. prophetic and anti-technological ('anti-Utopian', Lenin might have said; cp. p. 747 = State and Revolution 70-71), character of this 'scientific socialism' before its rise to power. But when Lenin confessed that he knew no book dealing with the more constructive problems of social engineering, then he only demonstrated that Marxists, faithful to Marx's commandments, did not even read the 'Utopian stuff of the 'professorial armchair socialists' who tried to make a beginning with these very problems; I am thinking of some of the Fabians in England and of A. Menger (e.g. Neue Staatslehre, 2nd edn, 1904, especially pp. 248 ff.) and J. Popper-Lynkeus in Austria. The latter developed apart from many other suggestions a technology of collective farming, and especially of giant farms of the kind later introduced in Russia (see his Allgemeine Nahrpflicht, 1912; cp. pp. 206 ff. and 300 ff. of the 2nd edn, 1923). But he was dismissed by Marxists as a 'half-socialist'. They called him a 'half-socialist' because he envisaged a private enterprise sector in his society; he confined the economic activity of the state to the care for the basic needs of everybody — for the 'guaranteed minimum of subsistence'. Everything beyond this was to be left to a strictly competitive system.

(2) Lenin's view in State and Revolution quoted above is (as J. Viner has pointed out) very similar to that of John Carruthers, Socialism and Radicalism (cp. note 9 to chapter 9); see especially pp. 14-16. He says: 'The capitalists have invented a system of finance which, although complex, is sufficiently simple to be practically worked, and which fully instructs everyone as to the best manner of managing his factory. A very similar although greatly simpler finance would in the same way instruct the elected manager of a socialist factory how he should manage it, and he would have no more need for advice from a professional organizer than a capitalist has.'

8. This naive naturalistic slogan is Marx's 'principle of communism' (taken over by Marx from Louis Blanc's article 'L' Organisation de travail', as Bryan Magee has kindly pointed out to me). Its origin is Platonic and early Christian (cp. note 29 to chapter 5; the Acts, 2, 44-45, and 4, 34-35; see also note 48 to chapter 24, and the cross-references given there). It is quoted by Lenin in State and Revolution; see H.o.M., 752 (= State and Revolution, 74). Marx's 'principle of socialism', which is incorporated in the New Constitution of the U.S.S.R. (1936), is slightly but significantly weaker; compare the Article 12: 'In the U.S.S.R.', we read there, 'the principle of socialism is realized: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his work".' The substitution of 'work' for the early Christian term 'needs' transforms a romantic and economically quite indefinite naturalistic phrase into a fairly practical but commonplace principle — and into one which even 'capitalism' may claim as its own.

9. I am alluding to the title of a famous book by Engels: 'The Development of Socialism From a Utopia Into a Science.' (The book has been published in English under the title: Socialism: Utopian and Scientific.)

10. See my The Poverty of Historicism (Economica, 1944: now published separately).

12. I do not intend to discuss here the metaphysical or the methodological problem of determinism in any detail. (A few further remarks on the problem will be found in chapter 22, below.) But I wish to point out how little adequate it is if 'determinism' and 'scientific method' are taken as synonyms. This is still done, even by a writer of the excellence and clarity of B. Malinowski. Cp., for instance, his paper m Human Affairs (ed. by Cattell, Cohen, and Travers, 1937), chapter XII. I fully agree with the methodological tendencies of this paper, with its plea for the application of scientific method in social science as well as with its brilliant condemnation of romantic tendencies in anthropology (cp. especially pp. 207 ff , 221-4.) But when Malinowski argues in favour of 'determinism in the study of human culture' (p. 212; cp., for instance, also p. 252), I fail to see what he means by 'determinism' if not simply 'scientific method'. This equation is, however, not tenable, and has its grave dangers, as shown in the text; for it may lead to historicism.

13. For a criticism of historicism, see The Poverty of Historicism (Economica, 1944). Marx may be excused for holding the mistaken belief that there is a 'natural law of historical development'; for some of the best scientists of his time (e.g. T. H. Huxley; cp. his Lay Sermons, 1880, p. 214) believed in the possibility of discovering a law of evolution. But there can be no empirical 'law of evolution'. There is a specific evolutionary hypothesis, stating that life on earth has developed in certain ways. But a universal or natural law of evolution would have to state a hypothesis concerning the course of development of life on all planets (at least). In other words, wherever we are confined to the observation of one unique process, there we cannot hope to find, and to test, a 'law of nature'. (Of course, there are laws of evolution pertaining to the development of young organisms, etc.)

There can be sociological laws, and even sociological laws pertaining to the problem of progress; for example, the hypothesis that, wherever the freedom of thought, and of the communication of thought, is effectively protected by legal institutions and institutions ensuring the publicity of discussion, there will be scientific progress. (Cp. chapter 23.) But there are reasons for holding the view that we should do better not to speak of historical laws at all. (Cp. note 7 to chapter 25, and text.)

14. Cp. Capital, 864 (Preface to the First Edition. For a similar remark of Mill's, see note 16, below). At the same place, Marx also says: 'It is the ultimate aim of this work to lay bare the economic law of motion of modem society.' (For this, cp. H.o.M., 374, and text to note 16 to the present chapter.) The clash between Marx's pragmatism and his historicism becomes fairly obvious if we compare these passages with the eleventh of his Theses on Feuerbach (quoted in text to note 11 to this chapter). In The Poverty of Historicism, section 17, I have tried to make this clash more obvious by characterizing Marx's historicism in a form which is exactly analogous to his attack on Feuerbach. For we can paraphrase Marx's passage quoted in the text by saying: The historicist can only interpret social development, and aid it in various ways; his point, however, is that nobody can change it. See also chapter 22. especially text to notes 5 ff.

15. Cp. Capital, 469; the next three quotations are from Capital, 868 (Preface to the Second Edition. The translation 'shallow syncretism' is not quite in keeping with the very strong expression of the original); op. cit., 673; and op. cit., 830. For the 'ample circumstantial evidence' mentioned in the text, see, for instance, op. cit., 105, 562, 649, 656.

16. Cp. Capital, 864 = H.o.M., 374; cp. note 14 to this chapter. The following three quotations are from J. S. Mill, A System of Logic (1st edn, 1843; quoted from the 8th edn). Book VI, Chapter X; § 2 (end); § 1 (beginning); § 1 (end). An interesting passage (which says nearly the same as Marx's famous remark quoted in text to note 14) can be found in the same chapter of Mill's Logic, § 8. Referring to the historical method, which searches for the 'laws of social order and of social progress', Mill writes: 'By its aid we may hereafter succeed not only in looking far forward into the future history of the human race, but in determining what artificial means may be used, and to what extent, to accelerate the natural progress in so far as it is beneficial; to compensate for whatever may be its inherent inconveniences or disadvantages, and to guard against the dangers or accidents to which our species is exposed from the necessary incidents of its progression.' (Italics mine.) Or as Marx puts it, to 'shorten and lessen its birth-pangs'.

17. Cp. Mill, loc. cit., § 2; the next remarks are from the first paragraph of § 3. The 'orbit' and the 'trajectory' are from the end of the second paragraph of § 3. When speaking of 'orbits' Mill thinks, probably, of such cyclical theories of historical development as formulated in Plato's Statesman, or perhaps in Machiavelli's Discourses on Livy.

18. Cp. Mill, loc. cit, the beginning of the last paragraph of § 3. — For all these passages, cp. also notes 6-9 to chapter 14, and The Poverty of Historicism, sections 22, 24, 27, 28.

19. Concerning psychologism (the term is due to E. Husserl), I may here quote a few sentences by the excellent psychologist D. Katz; the passages are taken from his article Psychological Needs (Chapter III of Human Affairs , ed. by Cattell, Cohen, and Travers, 1937, p. 36). 'In philosophy there has been for some time a tendency to make psychology "the" fundamental basis of all other sciences... This tendency is usually called psychologism... But even such sciences, which, like sociology and economics, are more closely related to psychology, have a neutral nucleus which is not psychological... ' Psychologism will be discussed at length in chapter 14. Cp. also note 44 to chapter 5.

20. Cp. Marx's Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), quoted in H.o.M., 371 (= Karl Marx, Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, edited by K. Kautsky, J. W. Dietz, Nachf Berlin 1930, LIV-LV, also in Capital, pp. xv f). The passage is quoted more fully in text to note 13 to chapter 15, and in text to note 3 to chapter 16; see also note 2 to chapter 14.

Notes to Chapter Fourteen

1. Cp. note 19 to the last chapter.

2. Cp. Marx's Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, quoted also in note 20 to chapter 13 and in text to notes 13 to chapter 15 and 4 to chapter 16; cp. H.o.M., 372 = Capital, p. xvi. See also Marx and Engels, German Ideology (H.o.M., 213 = GA, Series I, vol. v, 16): 'It is not consciousness that determines life, but life that determines consciousness.'

3. Cp. M. Ginsberg, Sociology (Home University Library, 130 ff), who discusses this problem in a similar context, without, however, referring to Marx.

4. Cp. for instance. Zoology Leaflet 10, published by the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, 1929.

9. For this and the following quotation see Mill, op. cit., VI; X, § 4.

10 I am using the term 'sociological laws' to denote the natural laws of social life, as opposed to its normative laws; cp. text to notes 8-9 to chapter 5.

11. Cp. note 10 to chapter 3. (The passage is from p. 122 of part II of my The Poverty of Historicism (Economica, N.S. xi, 1944), and p. 65 of the book.

I owe the suggestion that it was Marx who first conceived social theory as the study of the unwanted social repercussions of nearly all our actions to K. Polanyi, who emphasized this aspect of Marxism in private discussions (1924).

* (1) It should be noted, however, that in spite of the aspect of Marxism which has been just mentioned and which constitutes an important point of agreement between Marx's views on method and mine, there is a considerable disagreement between Marx's and my views about the way in which these unwanted or unintended repercussions have to be analysed. For Marx is a methodological collectivist. He believes that it is the 'system of economic relations' as such which gives rise to the unwanted consequences — a system of institutions which, in turn, may be explicable in terms of 'means of production', but which is not analysable in terms of individuals, their relations, and their actions. As opposed to this, I hold that institutions (and traditions) must be analysed in individualistic terms — that is to say, in terms of the relations of individuals acting in certain situations, and of the unintended consequences of their actions.

(2) The reference in the text to 'canvas-cleaning', and to chapter 9 is to notes 9 to 12, and the text, of this chapter.

(3) Concerning the remarks in the text (in the paragraph to which this note is appended, and in some of those which follow) about the unintended social repercussions of our actions, I wish to draw attention to the fact that the situation in the physical sciences (and in the field of mechanical engineering and technology) is somewhat similar. The task of technology is here also largely to inform us about unintended consequences of what we are doing (e.g. that a bridge may become too heavy if we strengthen certain of its components). But the analogy goes even further. Our mechanical inventions do rarely turn out according to our original plans. The inventors of the motor car probably did not foresee the social repercussions of their doings, but they certainly did not foresee the purely mechanical repercussions — the many ways in which their cars broke down. And while their cars were altered in order to avoid these breakdowns, they changed beyond recognition. (And with them, some people's motives and aspirations changed also.)

(4) With my criticism of the Conspiracy Theory (pp. 94-6), cp. my Prediction and Prophecy and their Significance for Social Theory (in Proceedings of the Xth International Congress of Philosophy, 1948, vol. i, pp. 82 ff., especially p. 87 f), and 'Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition' (The Rationalist Annual, 1949, pp. 36 ff., especially p. 40 f.). Both papers are now in my Conjectures and Refutations.*

12 See the passage from Mill cited in note 8 to this chapter.

13 Cp. note 63 to chapter 10. Important contributors to the logic of power are Plato (in Books VIII and IX of the Republic, and in the Laws), Aristotle, Machiavelli, Pareto, and many others.

A remark may be added here concerning the often repeated assertion that the social sciences operate with a method different from that of the natural sciences, in so far as we know the 'social atoms', i.e. ourselves, by direct acquaintance, while our knowledge of physical atoms is only hypothetical. From this, it is often concluded (e.g. by Karl Menger) that the method of social science, since it makes use of our knowledge of ourselves, is psychological, or perhaps 'subjective', as opposed to the 'objective' methods of the natural sciences. To this, we may answer: There is surely no reason why we should not use any 'direct' knowledge we may have of ourselves. But such knowledge is useful in the social sciences only if we generalize, i.e. if we assume that what we know of ourselves holds good for others too. But this generalization is of a hypothetical character, and it must be tested and corrected by experience of an 'objective' kind. (Before having met anybody who does not like chocolate, some people may easily believe that everybody likes it.) Undoubtedly, in the case of 'social atoms' we are in certain ways more favourably situated than in the case of physical atoms, owing not only to our knowledge of ourselves, but also to the use of language. Yet from the point of view of scientific method, a social hypothesis suggested by self-intuition is in no different position from a physical hypothesis about atoms. The latter may also be suggested to the physicist by a kind of intuition about what atoms are like. And in both cases, this intuition is a private affair of the man who proposes the hypothesis. What is 'public', and important for science, is merely the question whether the hypotheses could be tested by experience, and whether they stood up to tests. From this point of view, social theories are no more 'subjective' than physical ones. (And it would be clearer, for example, to speak of 'the theory of subjective values' or of 'the theory of acts of choice' than of 'the subjective theory of value': see also note 9 to chapter 20.)

15 The present paragraph has been inserted in order to avoid the misunderstanding mentioned in the text. I am indebted to Prof. E. Gombrich for drawing my attention to the possibility of such a misunderstanding.

16 Hegel contended that his 'Idea' was something existing 'absolutely', i.e. independently of anybody's thought. One might contend, therefore, that he was not a psychologist. Yet Marx, quite reasonably, did not take seriously this 'absolute idealism' of Hegel; he rather interpreted it as a disguised psychologism, and combated it as such. Cp. Capital, 873 (italics mine): 'For Hegel, the thought process (which he even presents in disguise under the name "Idea" as an independent agent or subject) is the creator of the real.' Marx confines his attack to the doctrine that the thought process (or consciousness, or mind) creates the 'real'; and he shows that it does not even create the social reality (to say nothing about the material universe).

For the Hegelian theory of the dependence of the individual upon society, see (apart from section iii of chapter 12) the discussion, in chapter 23, of the social, or more precisely, the inter-personal element in scientific method, as well as the corresponding discussion, in chapter 24, of the inter-personal element in rationality.

Notes to Chapter Fifteen

1. Cp. Cole's Preface to Capital, xvi. (But see also the next note.)

2. Lenin too sometimes used the term 'Vulgar Marxists', but in a somewhat different sense. — How little Vulgar Marxism has in common with the views of Marx may be seen from Cole's analysis, op. cit, xx, and from the text to notes 4 and 5 to chapter 16, and from note 17 to chapter 17.

3. According to Adler, lust for power, of course, is really nothing but the urge towards compensation for one's feelings of inferiority by proving one's superiority.

Some Vulgar Marxists even believe that the finishing touch to the philosophy of the modern man was added by Einstein, who, so they think, discovered 'relativity' or 'relativism', i.e. that 'everything is relative'.

4. J. F. Hecker writes {Moscow Dialogues, p. 76) of Marx's so-called 'historical materialism': 'I would have preferred to call it "dialectical historicism" or .. something of that sort.' — I again draw the reader's attention to the fact that in this book I am not dealing with Marx's dialectics, since I have dealt with them elsewhere. (Cp. note 4 to chapter 13.)

10 I have in mind questions concerning, for example, the influence of economic conditions (such as the need for land surveying) upon Egyptian geometry, and upon the different development of early Pythagorean geometry in Greece.

11 Cp. especially the quotation from Capital in note 13 to chapter 14; also the full passages from the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, quoted only partially in the text to the next note. For the problem of Marx's essentialism, and the distinction between 'reality' and appearance, see note 13 to this chapter, and notes 6 and 16 to chapter 17.

12. But I feel inclined to say that it is a little better than an idealism of the Hegelian or Platonic brand; as I said in 'What is Dialectic?', if I were forced to choose, which, fortunately, I am not, I would choose materialism. (Cp. p. 422 of Mind, vol. 49, ox Conjectures and Refutations, p. 331, where I deal with problems very similar to those dealt with here.)

13 For this and the following quotations, cp. Marx's Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, H.o.M., 372 (= Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, LV).

Some further light is thrown upon these passages (and on the text to note 3 to chapter 16) by the Second Observation of part II of Marx's Poverty of Philosophy (cp. H.o.M., 354 f. = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 179-80); for Marx here analyses society very clearly into three layers, if I may call them so. The first of these layers corresponds to 'reality' or 'essence', the second and the third to a primary and a secondary form of appearance. (This is very similar to Plato's distinction of Ideas, sensible things, and images of sensible things; cp. for the problem of Plato's essentialism chapter 3; for Marx's corresponding ideas, see also notes 8 and 16 to chapter 17.) The first or fundamental layer (or 'reality') is the material layer, the machinery and other material means of production that exist in society; this layer is called by Marx the material 'productive forces', or 'material productivity'. The second layer he calls 'productive relationship' or 'social relations'; they are dependent on the first layer: 'Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, they change their way of earning their living — they change all their social relations.' (For the first two layers, cp. text to note 3 to chapter 16.) The third layer is formed by the ideologies, i.e. by legal, moral, religious, scientific ideas: 'The same men who establish their social relations in conformity with material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories, in conformity with their social relations.' In terms of this analysis, we may say that in Russia the first layer was transformed in conformity with the third, a striking refutation of Marx's theory. (See also the next note.)

14 It is easy to make very general prophecies; for instance, to prophesy that, within a reasonable time, it will rain. Thus there would not be much in the prophecy that, in some decades, there will be a revolution somewhere. But, as we see, Marx said just a little more than that, and just enough to be falsified by events. Those who try to interpret this falsification away remove the last bit of empirical significance from Marx's system. It then becomes purely 'metaphysical' (in the sense of my The Logic of Scientific Discovery). How Marx conceived the general mechanism of any revolution, in accordance with his theory, is illustrated by the following description of the social revolution of the bourgeoisie (also called the 'industrial revolution'), taken from the Communist Manifesto (H.o.M., 28; italics mine = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 530-31): 'The means of production and of exchange, on whose foundation the bourgeoisie built itself up, were generated in feudal society. At a certain stage in the development of the means of production and of exchange the feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces. They became so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder. And they were burst asunder.' (Cp. also text to note 11, and note 17 to chapter 17.)

16. A testimony to this friendship can be found in Capital, at the end of footnote 2 to p. 671.

Marx, I admit, was often intolerant. Nevertheless, I feel — but I may easily be mistaken — that he had sufficient critical sense to see the weakness of all dogmatism, and that he would have disliked the way in which his theories were converted into a set of dogmas. (See note 30 to chapter 17, and p. 425 — p. 334 in Conjectures and Refutations — of 'What is Dialectic?' Cp. note 4 to chapter 13.) It seems, however, that Engels was prepared to tolerate the intolerance and orthodoxy of the Marxists. In his Preface to the first English translation of Capital, he writes (cp. Capital, 886) of the book that it 'is often called, on the Continent, "the Bible of the working class".' And instead of protesting against a description which converts 'scientific' socialism into a religion, Engels proceeds to show, in his comments, that Capital is worthy of this title, since 'the conclusions arrived at in this work are daily more and more becoming the fundamental principles of the great working-class movement' all over the world. From here there was only one step to the heresy-hunting and excommunication of those who retain the critical, i.e. scientific, spirit, the spirit which had once inspired Engels as well as Marx.

Notes to Chapter Sixteen

1. Cp. Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto; see H.o.M., p. 22 (= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 525). As pointed out in chapter 4 (see text to notes 5/6 and 11/12), Plato had very similar ideas.

2. Cp. text to note 15 to chapter 14.

3. Cp. Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy, H.o.M., 355 {= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 179). (The quotation is from the same place as that from which the passages quoted in note 13 to chapter 15 are taken.)

4. Cp. the preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy; cp. Capital, xvi, and H.o.M., 371 f (= Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, LIV-LV. See also note 20 to chapter 13, note 1 to chapter 14, note 13 to chapter 15, and text.) The passage quoted here, and especially the terms 'material productive forces' and 'productive relationships' receive some light from those quoted in note 13 to chapter 15.

5. Cp. Capital, 650 f. See also the parallel passage on capitalist and miser in Capital, 138 f, = H.o.M., 437; cp. also note 17 to chapter 17. In The Poverty of Philosophy, H.o.M., 367 (= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 189), Marx writes: 'Although all the members of the modem bourgeoisie have the same interest in so far as they form a class against another class, they have opposite, antagonistic interests, in so far as they stand face to face with one another. This opposition of interests results from the economic conditions of their bourgeois life.'

6. Capital, 651.

7. This is exactly analogous to Hegel's nationalist historicism, where the true interest of the nation gains consciousness in the subjective minds of the nationals, and especially of the leader.

8. Cp. the text to note 14 to chapter 13.

9. Cp. Capital, 651.

10 *I originally used the term 'laissez faire capitalism'; but in view of the fact that 'laissez-faire' indicates the absence of trade barriers (such as customs) — something highly desirable, I believe — and of the fact that I consider the economic policy of non-interference of the early nineteenth century as undesirable, and even as paradoxical, I decided to change my terminology, and to use the term 'unrestrained capitalism' instead.*

Notes to Chapter Seventeen

1. Cp. the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (H.o.M., 372 = Zur Kritik der politischen Oekonomie, LV). For the theory of the strata or layers of the 'superstructures', see the quotations in note 13 to chapter 15.

2. For Plato's recommendation of 'both persuasion and force', see, for instance, text to note 35 to chapter 5, and notes 5 and 10 to chapter 8.

3. Cp. Lenin, State and Revolution (H.o.M., 733/4 and 735 = State and Revolution, 15 and 16).

4. The two quotations are from Marx-Engels, The Communist Manifesto (H.o.M., 46 = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 546).

5. Cp. Lenin, State and Revolution (H.o.M., 725 = State and Revolution, 8-9).

6. For the characteristic problems of a historicist essentialism, and especially for problems of the type 'What is the state?' or 'What is government?' cp. the text to notes 26-30 to chapter 3,21-4 and 26 ff. to chapter 11 and 26 to chapter 12.

For the language of political demands (or better, of political 'proposals', as L. J. Russell puts it) which in my opinion must replace this kind of essentialism, cp. especially text between notes 41 and 42 to chapter 6 and note 5(3) to chapter 5. For Marx's essentialism, see especially text to note 11, and note 13, to chapter 15; note 16 to the present chapter; and notes 20-24 to chapter 20. Cp. especially the methodological remark in the third volume of Capital (Das Kapital, III/2, p. 352), quoted in note 20 to chapter 20.

7. This quotation is from the Communist Manifesto (H.o.M., 25 = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 528). The text is from Engels' Preface to the first English translation of Capital. I quote here the whole concluding passage of this Preface; Engels speaks there about Marx's conclusion 'that at least in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means. He certainly never forgot to add that he hardly expected the English ruling class to submit, without a "pro-slavery rebellion", to this peaceful and legal revolution'. (Cp. Capital, 887; see also text to note 7 to chapter 19.) This passage shows clearly that, according to Marxism, the violence or non-violence of the revolution will depend on the resistance or non-resistance of the old ruling class. Cp. also text to notes 3 ff. to chapter 19.

8. Cp. Engels, Anti-Duhring (H.o.M., 296 = GA, Special volume, 292); see also the passages mentioned in note 5 to this chapter.

The resistance of the bourgeoisie has been broken for some years in Russia; but there are no signs of the 'withering away' of the Russian state, not even in its internal organization.

The theory of the withering away of the state is highly unrealistic, and I think that it may have been adopted by Marx and Engels mainly in order to take the wind out of their rivals' sails. The rivals I have in mind are Bakunin and the anarchists; Marx did not like to see anyone else's radicalism outdoing his own. Like Marx, they aimed at the overthrow of the existing social order, directing their attack, however, against the politico-legal, instead of the economic system. To them, the state was the fiend who had to be destroyed. But for his anarchist competitors, Marx, from his own premises, might have easily granted the possibility that the institution of the state, under socialism, might have to fulfil new and indispensable functions; namely those functions of safeguarding justice and freedom allotted to it by the great theorists of democracy.

9. Cp. Capital 799.

10 In the chapter, 'Primary accumulation', Marx is, as he says (p. 801), 'not concerned .. with the purely economic causes of the agricultural revolution. Our present interest is the forcible' (i.e. political) 'means that were used to bring about the change.'

11 For the many passages, and the superstructures, cp. note 13 to chapter 15.

12 Cp. the text to the notes referred to in the last note.

13 One of the most noteworthy and valuable parts of Capital, a truly imperishable document of human suffering, is Chapter VIII of the First Volume, entitled 'The Working Day', in which Marx sketches the early history of labour legislation. From this well-documented chapter, the following quotations are taken.

It must, however, be realized that this very chapter contains the material for a complete refutation of Marxist 'Scientific Socialism', which is based upon the prophecy of ever- increasing exploitation of the workers. No man can read this chapter of Marx without realizing that this prophecy has fortunately not come true. It is not impossible, however, that this is due, in part, to the activities of the Marxists in organizing labour; but the main contribution comes from the increased productivity of labour — in its turn, according to Marx, a result of 'Capitalist accumulation'.

14 Cp. Capital, 246. (See the footnote 1 to this passage.)

15 Cp. Capital, 257 f. Marx's comment in his footnote 1 to this page is most interesting. He shows that such cases as these were used by the pro-slavery Tory reactionaries for propaganda for slavery. And he shows that among others, Thomas Carlyle, the oracle (a forerunner of fascism), participated in this pro-slavery movement. Carlyle, to quote Marx, reduced 'the one great event of contemporary history, the American Civil War, to this level, that the Peter of the North wants to break the head of the Paul of the South because the Peter of the North hires his workers "by the day, and the Paul of the South hires them by the lifetime".' Marx is here quoting Carlyle's article 'Ilias Americana in Nuce' (Macmillan's Magazine, August, 1863). And Marx concludes: 'Thus the bubble of the Tory sympathy for the urban workers (the Tories never had any sympathy for agricultural workers) has burst at last. Inside it we find — slavery!'

One of my reasons for quoting this passage is that I wish to emphasize Marx's complete disagreement with the belief that there is not much to choose between slavery and 'wage- slavery'. Nobody could stress more strongly than Marx the fact that the abolition of slavery (and consequently the introduction of 'wage-slavery') is a most important and necessary step in the emancipation of the oppressed. The term 'wage-slavery' is therefore dangerous and misleading; for it has been interpreted, by Vulgar Marxists, as an indication that Marx agreed with what is in fact Carlyle's appraisal of the situation.

16 Marx defines the 'value' of a commodity as the average number of labour hours necessary for its reproduction. This definition is a good illustration of his essentialism (cp. note 8 to this chapter). For he introduces value in order to get at the essential reality which corresponds to what appears in the form of the price of a commodity. Price is a delusive kind of appearance. 'A thing may have a price without having value', writes Marx (Capital, 79; see also Cole's excellent remarks in his Introduction to Capital, especially pp. xxvii, ff.). A sketch of Marx's 'value theory' will be found in chapter 20. (Cp. notes 9-27 to that chapter, and text.)

17. For the problem of the 'wage-slaves', cp. end of note 15 to this chapter; also Capital, 155 (especially footnote 1). For Marx's analysis the results of which are briefly sketched here, see especially Capital, 153 ff., also the footnote 1 to p. 153; cp. also my chapter 20, below.

My presentation of Marx's analysis may be supported by quoting a statement made by Engels in his Anti-Duhring on the occasion of a summary of Capital. Engels writes (H.o.M., 269 = GA, Special volume, 160-67): 'In other words, even if we exclude all possibility of robbery, violence, and fraud and even if we assume that all private property was originally produced by the owner's own labour; and that throughout the whole subsequent process, there was only exchange of equal values for equal values; even then the progressive development of production and exchange would necessarily bring about the present capitalist system of production; with its monopolization of the instruments of production as well as of the goods of consumption in the hands of a class weak in numbers; with its degradation into proletarian paupers of the other class comprising the immense majority; with its periodic cycle of production booms and of trade depressions; in other words, with the whole anarchy of our present system of production. The whole process is explained by purely economic causes: robbery, force, and the assumption of political interference of any kind are unnecessary at any point whatever.' Perhaps this passage may one day convince a Vulgar Marxist that Marxism does not explain depressions by the conspiracy of 'big business'. Marx himself said (Das Kapital, II, 406 f , italics mine): 'Capitalist production involves conditions which, independently of good or bad intentions, permit only a temporary relative prosperity of the working class, and always only as a forerunner of a depression.'

18 For the doctrine 'property is theft' or 'property is robbery', cp. also Marx's remark on John Watts in Capital, 601, footnote i.

19 For the Hegelian character of the distinction between merely 'formal' and 'actual' or 'real' freedom, or democracy, cp. note 62 to chapter 12. Hegel likes to attack the British constitution for its cult of merely 'formal' freedom, as opposed to the Prussian state in which 'real' freedom is 'actualized'. For the quotation at the end of this paragraph, cp. the passage quoted in the text to note 7 to chapter 15. See also notes 14 and 15 to chapter 20, and text.

20 For the paradox of freedom and the need for the protection of freedom by the state, cp. the four paragraphs in the text before note 42 to chapter 6, and especially notes 4 and 6 to chapter 7, and text; see also note 41 to chapter 12, and text, and note 7 to chapter 24.

21 Against this analysis, it may be said that, if we assume perfect competition between the entrepreneurs as producers, and especially as buyers of labour on the labour markets (and if we further assume that there is no 'industrial reserve army' of unemployed to exert pressure on this market), then there could be no talk of exploitation of the economically weak by the economically strong, i.e. of the workers by the entrepreneurs. But is the assumption of perfect competition between the buyers on the labour markets at all realistic? Is it not true that, for example, on many local labour markets, there is only one buyer of any significance? Besides, we cannot assume that perfect competition would automatically eliminate the problem of unemployment, if for no other reason than because labour cannot easily be moved.

22 For the problem of economic intervention by the state, and for a characterization of our present economic system as interventionism, see the next three chapters, especially note 9 to chapter 18 and text. It may be remarked that interventionism as used here is the economic complement of what I have called in chapter 6, text to notes 24-44, political protectionism. (It is clear why the term 'protectionism' cannot be used instead of 'interventionism'.) See especially note 9 to chapter 18, and 25/26 to chapter 20, and text.

23 The passage is quoted more fully in the text to note 14 to chapter 13; for the contradiction between practical action and historicist determinism, see that note, and text to notes 5 ff. to chapter 22.

27 Laws to safeguard democracy are still in a rather rudimentary state of development. Very much could and should be done. The freedom of the press, for instance, is demanded because of the aim that the public should be given correct information; but viewed from this standpoint, it is a very insufficient institutional guarantee that this aim will be achieved. What good newspapers usually do at present on their own initiative, namely, giving the public all important information available, might be established as their duty, either by carefully framed laws, or by the establishment of a moral code, sanctioned by public opinion. Matters such as, for instance, the Zinovief letter, could be perhaps controlled by a law which makes it possible to nullify elections won by improper means, and which makes a publisher who neglects his duty to ascertain as well as possible the truth of published information liable for the damage done; in this case, for the expenses of a fresh election. I cannot go into details here, but it is my firm conviction that we could easily overcome the technological difficulties which may stand in the way of achieving such ends as the conduct of election campaigns largely by appeal to reason instead of passion. I do not see why we should not, for instance, standardize the size, type, etc., of the electioneering pamphlets, and eliminate placards. (This need not endanger freedom, just as reasonable limitations imposed upon those who plead before a court of justice protect freedom rather than endanger it.) The present methods of propaganda are an insult to the public as well as to the candidate. Propaganda of the kind which may be good enough for selling soap should not be used in matters of such consequence.

28 *Cp. the British 'Control of Engagement Order', 1947. The fact that this order is hardly used (it is clearly not abused) shows that legislation of even the most dangerous character is enacted without compelling need — obviously because the fundamental difference between the two types of legislation, viz. the one that establishes general rules of conduct, and the one that gives the government discretionary powers, is not sufficiently understood.*

29 *For this distinction, and for the use of the term 'legal framework', see F. A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (I am quoting from the 1st English edition, London, 1944). See, for example, p. 54, where Hayek speaks of 'the distinction .. between the creation of a permanent framework of laws within which productive activity is guided by individual decision, and the direction of economic activity by a central authority.' (Italics mine.) Hayek emphasizes the significance of the predictability of the legal framework; see, for example, p. 56.*

30 The review, published in the European Messenger of St. Petersburg, is quoted by Marx in the Preface to the 2nd edition of Capital. (See Capital, 871.)

In fairness to Marx, we must say that he did not always take his own system too seriously, and that he was quite prepared to deviate a little from his fundamental scheme; he considered it as a point of view (and as such it was certainly most important) rather than as a system of dogmas.

Thus we read, on two consecutive pages of Capital (832 f ), a statement which emphasizes the usual Marxist theory of the secondary character of the legal system (or of its character as a cloak, an 'appearance'), and another statement which ascribes a very important role to the political might of the state and raises it explicitly to the rank of a full-grown economic force. The first of these statements, 'The author would have done well to remember that revolutions are not made by laws', refers to the industrial revolution, and to an author who asked for the enactments by which it was effected. The second statement is a comment (and one most unorthodox from the Marxist point of view) upon the methods of accumulating capital; all these methods, Marx says, 'make use of the power of the state, which is the centralized political might of society. Might is the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one. It is itself an economic force.' Up to the last sentence, which I have put in italics, the passage is clearly orthodox. But the last sentence breaks through this orthodoxy.

Engels was more dogmatic. One should compare especially one of his statements in his Anti-Duhring (H.o.M., 277), where he writes, 'The role played in history by political might as opposed to economic developments is now clear.' He contends that whenever 'political might works against economic developments, then, as a rule, with only few exceptions, it succumbs; these few exceptions are isolated cases of conquest in which barbarian conquerors .. have laid waste .. productive forces which they did not know how to use'. (Compare, however, notes 13/14 to chapter 15, and text.)

The dogmatism and authoritarianism of most Marxists is a really astonishing phenomenon. It just shows that they use Marxism irrationally, as a metaphysical system. It is to be found among radicals and moderates alike. E. Bums, for example, makes (in H.o.M., 374) the surprisingly naive statement that 'refutations .. inevitably distort Marx's theories'; which seems to imply that Marx's theories are irrefutable, i.e. unscientific; for every scientific theory is refutable, and can be superseded. L. Laurat, on the other hand, in Marxism and Democracy, p. 226, says: 'In looking at the world in which we live, we are staggered at the almost mathematical precision with which the essential predictions of Karl Marx are being realized. '

Marx himself seems to have thought differently. I may be wrong in this, but I do believe in the sincerity of his statement (at the end of his Preface to the first edition of Capital; see 865): 'I welcome scientific criticism, however harsh. But in the face of the prejudices of a so-called public opinion, I shall stick to my maxim ..: Follow your course, and let them chatter!'

1. For Marx's essentialism, and the fact that the material means of production play the part of essences in his theory, cp. especially note 13 to chapter 15. See also note 6 to chapter 17 and notes 20-24 to chapter 20, and text.

2. Cp. Capital, 864 =H.o.M., 374, and notes 14 and 16 to chapter 13.

3. What I call the secondary aim of Capital, its anti-apologetic aim, includes a somewhat academic task, namely, the critique of political economy with regard to its scientific status. It is this latter task to which Marx alluded both in the title of the forerunner of Capital, namely in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, and in the sub-title of Capital itself, which reads, in literal translation. Critique of Political Economy. For both these titles allude unmistakably to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. And this title, in turn, was intended to mean: 'Critique of pure or metaphysical philosophy in regard to its scientific status'. (This is more clearly indicated by the title of the paraphrase of Kant's Critique which reads in an almost literal translation: Prolegomena To Any Metaphysics Which In Future May Justly Claim Scientific Status.) By alluding to Kant, Marx apparently wished to say: 'Just as Kant criticized the claim of metaphysics, revealing that it was no science but largely apologetic theology, so I criticize here the corresponding claims of bourgeois economics.' That the main tendency of Kant's Critique was, in Marx's circles, considered to be directed against apologetic theology can be seen from its representation in Religion and Philosophy in Germany by Marx's friend, H. Heine (cp. notes 15 and 16 to chapter 15). It is not quite without interest that, in spite of Engels' supervision, the first English translators of Capital translated its sub-title as A Critical Analysis of Capitalist Production , thus substituting an emphasis upon what I have described in the text as Marx's first aim for an allusion to his second aim.

Burke is quoted by Marx in Capital, 843, note 1. The quotation is from E. Burke, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity, 1800, pp. 31 f.

4. Cp. my remarks on class consciousness towards the end of section I, in chapter 16.

Concerning the continued existence of class-unity after the class struggle against the class enemy has ceased, it is, I think, hardly in keeping with Marx's assumptions, and especially with his dialectics, to assume that class consciousness is a thing that can be accumulated and afterwards stored, that it can survive the forces that produced it. But the further assumption that it must necessarily outlive these forces contradicts Marx's theory which looks upon consciousness as a mirror or as a product of hard social realities. And yet, this further assumption must be made by anybody who holds with Marx that the dialectic of history must lead to socialism.

The following passage from the Communist Manifesto (H.o.M., 46 f. = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 46) is particularly interesting in this context; it contains a clear statement that the class consciousness of the workers is a mere consequence of the 'force of circumstances', i.e. the pressure of the class situation; but it contains, at the same time, the doctrine criticized in the text, namely, the prophecy of the classless society. This is the passage: 'In spite of the fact that the proletariat is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class during its struggle with the bourgeoisie; in spite of the fact that, by means of revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production; in spite of these facts, it will sweep away, along with these conditions, also the conditions for the existence of any class antagonism and of any classes, and will thereby abolish its own supremacy as a class. — In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonism, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the warrant for the free development of all.' (Cp. also text to note 8 to this chapter.) It is a beautiful belief, but it is an aesthetic and romantic belief; it is a wishful 'Utopianism', to use Marxist terminology, not a 'scientific socialism'.

Marx fought against what he called 'Utopianism', and rightly so. (Cp. chapter 9.) But since he was himself a romantic, he failed to discern the most dangerous element in Utopianism, its romantic hysteria, its aestheticist irrationalism; instead, he fought against its (admittedly most immature) attempts at rational planning, opposing to them his historicism. (Cp. note 21 to the present chapter.)

For all his acute reasoning and for all his attempts to use scientific method, Marx permitted irrational and aesthetic sentiments to usurp, in places, complete control of his thoughts. Nowadays one calls this wishful thinking. It was romantic, irrational, and even mystical wishful thinking that led Marx to assume that the collective class unity and class solidarity of the workers would last after a change in the class situation. It is thus wishful thinking, a mystical collectivism, and an irrational reaction to the strain of civilization which leads Marx to prophesy the necessary advent of socialism.

This kind of romanticism is one of the elements of Marxism which appeals most strongly to many of its followers. It is expressed, for example, most touchingly in the dedication of Hecker's Moscow Dialogues. Hecker speaks here of socialism as of 'a social order where the strife of class and race shall be no more, and where truth, goodness and beauty shall be the share of all'. Who would not like to have heaven on earth! And yet, it must be one of the first principles of rational politics that we cannot make heaven on earth. We are not going to become Free Spirits or angels at least not for the next couple of centuries or so. We are bound to this earth by our metabolism, as Marx once wisely declared; or as Christianity puts it, we are spirit and flesh. Thus we must be more modest. In politics and in medicine, he who promises too much is likely to be a quack. We must try to improve things, but we must get rid of the idea of a philosopher's stone, of a formula which will convert our corrupt human society into pure, lasting gold.

At the back of all this is the hope of casting out the devil from our world. Plato thought he could do it by banishing him to the lower classes, and ruling over him. The anarchists dreamt that once the state, the Political System, was destroyed, everything must turn out well. And Marx dreamt a similar dream of banishing the devil by destroying the economic system.

These remarks are not intended to imply that it is impossible to make even rapid advances, perhaps even through the introduction of comparatively small reforms, such as, for example, a reform of taxation, or a reduction of the rate of interest. I only wish to insist that we must expect every elimination of an evil to create, as its unwanted repercussion, a host of new though possibly very much lesser evils, which may be on an altogether different plane of urgency. Thus the second principle of sane politics would be: all politics consists in choosing the lesser evil (as the Viennese poet and critic K. Kraus put it). And politicians should be zealous in the search for the evils their actions must necessarily produce instead of concealing them, since a proper evaluation of competing evils must otherwise become impossible.

5. Although I do not intend to deal with Marx's dialectics (cp. note 4 to chapter 13), I may show that it would be possible to 'strengthen' Marx's logically inconclusive argument by so- called 'dialectical reasoning'. In accordance with this reasoning, all we need is to describe the antagonistic trends within capitalism in such a manner that socialism (for instance in the form of a totalitarian state-capitalism) appears as the necessary synthesis. The two antagonistic tendencies of capitalism can then perhaps be described thus. Thesis: The tendency towards the accumulation of capital in a few hands; towards industrialization and bureaucratic control of industry; towards economic and psychological levelling of the workers through the standardization of needs and desires. Antithesis: The increasing misery of the great masses; their increasing class consciousness in consequence of {a) class war, and {b) their increasing realization of their paramount significance within an economic system like that of an industrial society in which the working class is the only productive class, and accordingly the only essential class. (Cp. also note 15 to chapter 19, and text.)

It is hardly necessary to show how the desired Marxist synthesis emerges; but it may be necessary to insist that a slightly changed emphasis in the description of the antagonistic tendency may lead to very different 'syntheses'; in fact, to any other synthesis one wishes to defend. For instance, one could easily present fascism as a necessary synthesis; or perhaps 'technocracy'; or else, a system of democratic interventionism.

6. *Bryan Magee writes about this passage: 'This is what The New Class by Djilas is all about: a fully worked out theory of the realities of the Communist revolution, written by an unrepentant Communist.'*

7. The history of the working-class movement is full of contrasts. It shows that the workers have been ready for the greatest sacrifices in their fight for the liberation of their own class, and beyond this, of mankind. But there are also many chapters telling a sorry tale of quite ordinary selfishness and of the pursuit of sectional interest to the detriment of all.

It is certainly understandable that a trade union which obtains a great advantage for its members through solidarity and collective bargaining should try to exclude those from these benefits who are not prepared to join the union; for instance, by incorporating in their collective contracts the condition that only members of the union are to be employed. But it is a very different matter, and indeed indefensible, if a union which in this way has obtained a monopoly closes its membership list, thus keeping out fellow workers who want to join, without even establishing a just method (such as the strict adherence to a waiting list) of admitting new members. That such things can occur shows that the fact that a man is a worker does not always prevent him from forgetting all about the solidarity of the oppressed and from making full use of the economic prerogatives he may possess, i.e. from exploiting his fellow workers.

8. Cp. The Communist Manifesto (H.o.M., 47 = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 546); the passage is quoted more fully in note 4 to this chapter, where Marx's romanticism is dealt with.

9. The term 'capitalism' is much too vague to be used as a name of a definite historical period. The term 'capitalism' was originally used in a disparaging sense, and it has retained this sense ('system favouring big profits made by people who do not work') in popular usage. But at the same time it has also been used in a neutral scientific sense, but with many different meanings. In so far as, according to Marx, all accumulations of means of production may be termed 'capital', we may even say that 'capitalism' is in a certain sense synonymous with 'industrialism'. We could in this sense quite correctly describe a communist society, in which the state owns all capital, as 'state-capitalism'. For these reasons, I suggest using the name 'unrestrained capitalism' for that period which Marx analysed and christened 'capitalism', and the name interventionism for our own period. The name 'interventionism' could indeed cover the three main types of social engineering in our time: the collectivist interventionism of Russia; the democratic interventionism of Sweden and the 'Smaller Democracies' and the New Deal in America; and even the fascist methods of regimented economy. What Marx called 'capitalism' — i.e. unrestrained capitalism — has completely 'withered away' in the twentieth century.

10. The Swedish 'social democrats', the party which inaugurated the Swedish experiment, had once been Marxist; but it gave up its Marxist theories shortly after its decision to accept governmental responsibilities and to embark upon a great programme of social reform. One of the aspects in which the Swedish experiment deviates from Marxism is its emphasis upon the consumer, and the role played by the consumer co-operatives, as opposed to the dogmatic Marxist emphasis upon production. The technological economic theory of the Swedes is strongly influenced by what Marxists would call 'bourgeois economies', while the orthodox Marxist theory of value plays no role in it whatever.

11. For this programme, see H.o.M., 46 (= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 545). — With point (1), cp. text to note 15 to chapter 19.

It may be remarked that even in one of the most radical statements ever made by Marx, the Address to the Communist League (1850), he considered a progressive income tax a most revolutionary measure. In the final description of revolutionary tactics towards the end of this address which culminates in the battle cry 'Revolution in permanence!' Marx says: 'If the democrats propose proportional taxation, the workers must demand progressive taxation. And should the democrats themselves declare for a moderate progressive tax, the workers must insist upon a steeply graduated tax; so steeply graduated as to cause the collapse of large capital.' (Cp. H.o.M., 70, and especially note 44 to chapter 20.)

12. For my conception of piecemeal social engineering, cp. especially chapter 9. For political intervention in economic matters, and a more precise explanation of the term interventionism, see note 9 to this chapter and text.

13. I consider this criticism of Marxism very important. It is mentioned in sections 17/18 of my The Poverty of Historicism; and as stated there, it can be parried by proffering a historicist moral theory. But I believe that only if such a theory (cp. chapter 22, especially notes 5 ff. and text) is accepted can Marxism escape the charge that it teaches 'the belief in political miracles'. (This term is due to Julius Kraft.) See also notes 4 and 21 to the present chapter.

14. For the problem of compromise, cp. a remark at the end of the paragraph to which note 3 to chapter 9 is appended. For a justification of the remark in the text, 'For they do not plan for the whole of society', see chapter 9. and my The Poverty of Historicism, II (especially the criticism of holism).

15. F. A. von Hayek (cp., for example, his Freedom and the Economic System, Chicago, 1939) insists that a centralized 'planned economy' must involve the gravest dangers to individual freedom. But he also emphasizes that planning for freedom is necessary. ('Planning for freedom' is also advocated by Mannheim, in his Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction, 1941. But since his idea of 'planning' is emphatically collectivistic and holistic, I am convinced that it must lead to tyranny, and not to freedom; and, indeed, Mannheim's 'freedom' is the offspring of Hegel's. Cp. the end of chapter 23, and my paper quoted at the end of the preceding note.)

16. This contradiction between the Marxist historical theory and the Russian historical reality is discussed in chapter 15, notes 13/14, and text.

17. This is another contradiction between Marxist theory and historical practice; as opposed to that mentioned in the last note, this second contradiction has given rise to many discussions and attempts to explain the matter by the introduction of auxiliary hypotheses. The most important of these is the theory of imperialism and colonial exploitation. This theory asserts that the revolutionary development is frustrated in countries in which the proletarian in common with the capitalist reaps where not he but the oppressed natives of the colonies have sown. This hypothesis which is undoubtedly refuted by developments like those in the non-imperialistic Smaller Democracies will be discussed more fully in chapter 20 (text to notes 37-40).

Many social democrats interpreted the Russian revolution, in accordance with Marx's scheme, as a belated 'bourgeois revolution', insisting that this revolution was bound up with an economic development parallel to the 'industrial revolution' in the more advanced countries. But this interpretation assumes, of course, that history must conform with the Marxist scheme. In fact, such an essentialist problem as whether the Russian revolution is a belated industrial revolution or a premature 'social revolution' is of a purely verbal character; and if it leads to difficulties within Marxism, then this shows only that Marxism has verbal difficulties in describing events which have not been foreseen by its founders.

18. The leaders were able to inspire in their followers an enthusiastic faith in their mission — to liberate mankind. But the leaders also were responsible for the ultimate failure of their politics, and the breakdown of the movement. This failure was due, very largely, to intellectual irresponsibility. The leaders had assured the workers that Marxism was a science, and that the intellectual side of the movement was in the best hands. But they never adopted a scientific, i.e. a critical, attitude towards Marxism. As long as they could apply it (and what is easier than this?), as long as they could interpret history in articles and speeches, they were intellectually satisfied. (Cp. also notes 19 and 22 to this chapter.)

19. For a number of years prior to the rise of fascism in Central Europe a very marked defeatism within the ranks of the social democratic leaders was noticeable. They began to believe that fascism was an unavoidable stage in social development. That is to say, they began to make some amendments to Marx's scheme, but they never doubted the soundness of the historicist approach; they never saw that such a question as 'Is fascism an unavoidable stage in the development of civilization?' may be totally misleading.

20. The Marxist movement in Central Europe had few precedents in history. It was a movement which, in spite of the fact that it professed atheism, can truly be called a great religious movement. (Perhaps this may impress some of those intellectuals who do not take Marxism seriously.) Of course, it was a collectivist and even a tribalist movement, in many ways. But it was a movement of the workers to educate themselves for their great task; to emancipate themselves, to raise the standard of their interests and of their pastimes; to substitute mountaineering for alcohol, classical music for swing, serious books for thrillers. 'The emancipation of the working class can only be achieved by the workers themselves' was their belief (For the deep impression made by this movement on some observers, see, for example, G. E. R. Gedye's Fallen Bastions, 1939.)

21. The quotation is from Marx's Preface to the second edition of Capital (cp. Capital, 870; cp. also note 6 to chapter 13). It shows how fortunate Marx was in his reviewers (cp. also note 30 to chapter 17, and text).

Another most interesting passage in which Marx expresses his anti-Utopianism and historicism can be found in The Civil War in France (H.o.M., 150, K. Marx, Der Buergerkrieg in Frankreich, A. Willaschek, Hamburg 1920, 65-66), where Marx says approvingly of the Paris Commune of 1871: 'The working class did not expect miracles from the Commune. They have no ready-made Utopias, to be introduced by the decree of the people. They know that in order to achieve their own emancipation, and with it, those higher forms to which our present society is irresistibly tending,... they will have to pass through long struggles, through a series of historic processes, transforming circumstances and men. They have no ideals to realize, but to set free the elements of the new society with which the old collapsing bourgeois society itself is pregnant.' There are few passages in Marx which exhibit the historicist lack of plan more strikingly. 'They have to pass through long struggles Marx says. But if they have no plan to realize, 'no ideals to realize', as Marx says, what are they struggling for? They 'did not expect miracles', Marx says; but he himself expected miracles in believing that the historical struggle irresistibly tends to 'higher forms' of social life. (Cp. notes 4 and 13 to the present chapter.) Marx was to a certain extent justified in his refusal to embark upon social engineering. To organize the workers was undoubtedly the most important practical task of his day. If such a suspect excuse as 'the time was not ripe for it' can ever be justly applied, it must be applied to Marx's refusal to dabble in the problems of rational institutional social engineering. (This point is illustrated by the childish character of the Utopian proposals down to and including, say, Bellamy.) But it was unfortunate that he supported this sound political intuition by a theoretical attack upon social technology. This became an excuse for his dogmatic followers to continue in the same attitude at a time when things had changed, and technology had become politically more important even than organizing the workers.

22. The Marxist leaders interpreted the events as the dialectical ups and downs of history. They thus functioned as cicerones, as guides through the hills (and valleys) of history rather than as political leaders of action. This dubious art of interpreting the terrible events of history instead of fighting them was forcefully denounced by the poet K. Kraus (mentioned in note 4 to this chapter).

A remark may be made concerning the term 'concentration of capital' (which I have translated in the text 'concentration of capital in a few hands'). In the third edition of Capital (cp. Capital, 689 ff.) Marx introduced the following distinctions: (a) by accumulation of capital he means merely the growth in the total amount of capital goods, for example, within a certain region; (b) by concentration of capital he means (cp. 689/690) the normal growth of the capital in the hands of the various individual capitalists, a growth which arises from the general tendency towards accumulation and which gives them command over an increasing number of workers; (c) by centralization he means (cp. 691) that kind of growth of capital which is due to the expropriation of some capitalists by other capitalists ('one capitalist lays many of his fellows low').

In the second edition, Marx had not yet distinguished between concentration and centralization; he used the term 'concentration' in both senses {b) and (c). To show the difference, we read in the third edition (Capital, 691): 'Here we have genuine centralization, in contradistinction to accumulation and concentration.' In the second edition, we read at this place: 'Here we have genuine concentration, in contradistinction to accumulation.' The alteration, however, was not made throughout the book, but only in a few passages (especially pp. 690-3, and 846). In the passage here quoted in the text, the wording remained the same as in the second edition. In the passage (p. 846) quoted in the text to note 15 to this chapter, Marx replaced 'concentration' by 'centralization'.

4. Cp. Marx's Eighteenth Brumaire (H.o.M., 123; italics mine = Karl Marx, Der Achtzehnte Brumaire des Louis Bonaparte, Verlag fur Literatur und Politik. Wien-Berlin 1927, 28-29): 'The bourgeois republic triumphed. On its side stood the aristocracy of finance, the industrial bourgeoisie, the middle class, the petty bourgeoisie, the army, the rabble proletariat, organized as the Mobile Guard, the intellectual lights, the clergy, and the rural population. On the side of the Paris proletariat stood none but the proletariat itself.' For an incredibly naive statement made by Marx concerning the 'rural producers', cp. also note 43 to chapter 20.

5. Cp. text to note 11 to chapter 18.

6. Cp. the quotation in note 4 to the present chapter, especially the reference to the middle class and to the 'intellectual lights'.

For the 'rabble proletariat', cp. the same place and Capital, 711 f. (The term is there translated as 'tatterdemalion proletariat'.)

7. For the meaning of 'class consciousness' in Marx's sense, see end of section I in chapter 16.

Apart from the possible development of a defeatist spirit, as mentioned in the text, there are other things which may undermine the class consciousness of the workers, and which may lead to disunion among the working class. Lenin, for example, mentions that imperialism may split the workers by offering them a share in its spoils; he writes (H.o.M., 101 = V. I. Lenin, L.L.L., Imperialism, the Highest State of Capitalism, vol. xv, 96; cp. also note 40 to chapter 20): '... in Great Britain, the tendency of imperialism to split the workers, to strengthen the opportunists among them, and to cause temporary decay in the working-class movement, revealed itself much earlier than at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries.'

H. B. Parkes rightly mentions in his excellent analysis, Marxism — A Post Mortem (1940; also published under the title Marxism — An Autopsy), that it is quite possible that entrepreneurs and workers may together exploit the consumer; in a protected or monopolist industry, they may share in the spoil. This possibility shows that Marx exaggerates the antagonism between the interests of the workers and entrepreneurs.

And lastly it may be mentioned that the tendency of most governments to proceed along the line of least resistance is liable to lead to the following result. Since workers and entrepreneurs are the best organized and politically most powerful groups in the community, a modern government may easily tend to satisfy both at the expense of the consumer. And it may do so without a guilty conscience; for it will persuade itself that it has done well by establishing peace between the most antagonistic parties in the community.

8. Cp. text to notes 17 and 18 to this chapter.

9. Some Marxists even dare to assert that there would be far less suffering involved in a violent social revolution than in the chronic evils inherent in what they call 'capitalism'. (Cp. L. Lamat, Marxism and Democracy, translated by E. Fitzgerald, 1940; p. 38, note 2; Laurat criticizes Sidney Hook, Towards an Understanding of Marx , for holding such views.) These Marxists do not, however, disclose the scientific basis of this estimate; or to speak more bluntly, of this utterly irresponsible piece of oracular pretence.

10. 'It should be plain without any further comment', Engels says about Marx, remembering his Hegel, 'that if things and their mutual relations are taken to be variable instead of fixed, then their mental images, their notions, will be subject to variation and transformation also; that one does not attempt to force them into the pigeonholes of rigid definitions; but that one treats them, as the case may be, according to the historical or logical character of the process by which they have been formed.' (Cp. Engels' Preface to Das Kapital, III/l, p. xvi.)

11. It does not correspond precisely because the Communists sometimes profess the more moderate theory, especially in those countries where this theory is not represented by the Social Democrats. Cp., for example, text to note 26 to this chapter.

12. Cp. notes 4 and 5 to chapter 17, and text; as well as note 14 to the present chapter; and contrast with notes 17 and 18 to the present chapter, and text.

13. There are, of course, positions between these two; and there are also more moderate Marxist positions: especially A. Bernstein's so-called 'revisionism'. This latter position, in fact, gives up Marxism altogether; it is nothing but the advocacy of a strictly democratic and non- violent workers' movement.

14. This development of Marx's is, of course, an interpretation, and not a very convincing one; the fact is that Marx was not very consistent, and that he used the terms 'revolution', 'force', 'violence', etc., with a systematic ambiguity. This position was partly forced upon him by the fact that history during his lifetime did not proceed according to his plan. It conformed to the Marxist theory in so far as it exhibited most clearly a tendency away from what Marx called 'capitalism', i.e. away from non-intervention. Marx frequently referred with satisfaction to this tendency, for example, in his Preface to the first edition of Capital. (Cp. the quotation in note 16 to the present chapter; see also the text.) On the other hand, this same tendency (towards interventionism) led to an improvement of the lot of the workers in opposition to Marx's theory; and it thereby reduced the likelihood of a revolution. Marx's wavering and ambiguous interpretations of his own teaching are probably the result of this situation.

In order to illustrate the point, two passages may be quoted, one from an early and one from a late work of Marx. The early passage is from the Address to the Communist League (1850; cp. H.o.M., pp. 60 ff. = Labour Monthly, September 1922, 136 ff). The passage is interesting because it is practical. Marx assumes that the workers together with the bourgeois democrats have won the battle against feudalism and have set up a democratic regime. Marx insists that after having achieved this, the battle-cry of the workers must be 'Revolution in permanence!' What this means is explained in detail (p. 66): 'They must act in such a manner that the revolutionary excitement does not collapse immediately after the victory. On the contrary, they must maintain it as long as possible. Far from opposing so-called excesses, such as the sacrificing to popular revenge of hated individuals or public buildings to which hateful memories are attached, such deeds must not only be tolerated, but their direction must be taken in hand, for example's sake.' (Cp. also note 35 (1) to this chapter, and note 44 to chapter 20.)

A moderate passage which contrasts with the previous one may be chosen from Marx's Address to the First International (Amsterdam, 1872; cp. L. Laurat, op. cit., p. 36): 'We do not deny that there are countries, such as the United States and Great Britain — if I knew your institutions better, I should perhaps add Holland — where the workers will be able to achieve their aims by peaceful means. But this is not the case in all countries.' For these more moderate views, cp. also text to notes 16-18 to the present chapter.

But the whole confusion can be found in a nutshell as early as in the final summary of the Manifesto where we find the following two contradictory statements, separated by one sentence only: (1) 'In short, the Communists support everywhere every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.' (This must include England, for example.) (2) Finally, they labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries.' To make the confusion complete, the next sentences run: 'The communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions.' (Democratic conditions are not excluded.)

15. Cp. Capital, 846 = H.o.M., 403 f. (Concerning the term 'centralization', substituted in the third edition for the term 'concentration' of the second edition, cp. note 3 to the present chapter. Concerning the translation 'their capitalist cloak becomes a straitjacket', it may be remarked that a more literal translation would be: 'they become incompatible with their capitalist wrapper' or 'cloak' or slightly more freely: 'their capitalist cloak becomes intolerable'.)

This passage is strongly influenced by Hegelian dialectics, as is shown by its continuation. (Hegel called the antithesis of a thesis sometimes its negation, and the synthesis the 'negation of the negation'.) 'The capitalist method of appropriation', Marx writes, '... is the first negation of individual private property based upon individual labour. But with the inexorability of a law of nature, capitalist production begets its own negation. It is the negation of the negation. This second negation... establishes... the common ownership of the land and of the means of production.' (For a more detailed dialectical derivation of socialism, cp. note 5 to chapter 18.)

16. This was the attitude taken up by Marx in his Preface to the first edition of Capital (Capital, 865), where he says: 'Still, progress is undeniable... The foreign representatives of the British crown... tell us... that in the more advanced countries of the European continent, a change in the relations between capital and labour is just as obvious and as inevitable as in England... Mr. Wade, the vice-president of the United States of North America... declares at public meetings that, after the abolition of slavery, a radical change in the conditions of capital and landed property comes next on the agenda!' (Cp. also note 14 to this chapter.)

17. Cp. Engels' Preface to the first English edition of Capital. (Capital, 887.) The passage is quoted more fully in note 9 to chapter 17.

18. Cp. Marx's letter to Hyndman, dated December 8th, 1880; see H. H. Hyndman, The Record of an Adventurous Life (1911), p. 283. Cp. also L. Laurat, op. cit., 239. The passage may be quoted here more fully: 'If you say that you do not share the views of my party for England I can only reply that that party considers an English revolution not necessary, but — according to historic precedents — possible. If the unavoidable evolution turns into a revolution, it would not only be the fault of the ruling classes, but also of the working class.' (Note the ambiguity of the position.)

19. H. B. Parkes, Marxism — A Post Mortem, p. 101 (cp. also pp. 106 ff.), expresses a similar view; he insists that the Marxist 'belief that capitalism cannot be reformed but can only be destroyed' is one of the characteristic tenets of the Marxist theory of accumulation. 'Adopt some other theory', he says, and it remains possible for capitalism to be transformed by gradual methods.'

20. Cp. the end of the Manifesto (H.o.M., 59 = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 557): 'The proletarians have nothing to lose but their fetters. They have a world to win.'

21. Cp. the Manifesto (H.o.M., 45 = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 545); the passage is quoted more fully in text to note 35 to this chapter. — The last quotation in this paragraph is from the Manifesto, H.o.M., 35 (= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 536). Cp. also note 35 to this chapter.

22. But social reforms have rarely been carried out under the pressure of those who suffer; religious movements — I include the Utilitarians — and individuals (like Dickens) may influence public opinion greatly. And Henry Ford discovered, to the astonishment of all Marxists and many 'capitalists' that a rise in wages may benefit the employer.

23. Cp. notes 18 and 21 to chapter 18.

24. Cp. H.o.M., 37 (= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 538).

25. Cp. The State and Revolution, H.o.M., 756 (= State and Revolution, 77). Here is the passage in full: 'Democracy is of great importance for the working class in its struggle for freedom against the capitalists. But democracy is by no means a limit one may not overstep; it is only one of the stages in the course of the development from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism, to Communism.'

Lenin insists that democracy means only 'formal equality'. Cp. also H.o.M., 834 (= V. I. Lenin, The Proletarian Revolution and the Renegade Kautsky. L.L.L., vol. xviii, 34), where Lenin uses this Hegelian argument of merely 'formal' equality against Kautsky: he accepts the formal equality, which under capitalism is merely a fraud and a piece of hypocrisy at its face value as a de facto equality... '

26. Cp. Parkes, Marxism — A Post Mortem, p. 219.

27. Such a tactical move is in keeping with the Manifesto which announces that the Communists 'labour everywhere for the union and agreement of the democratic parties of all countries', but which announces at the same time 'that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of existing social conditions', which include democratic conditions.

But such a tactical move is also in keeping with the party programme of 1928; for this says (H.O.M., 1036; italics mine = The Programme of the Communist International, Modem Books Ltd., London 1932, 61): 'In determining its line of tactics each Communist Party must take into account the concrete internal and external situation... The party determines slogans... with a view to organizing... the masses on the broadest possible scale.' But this cannot be achieved without making full use of the systematic ambiguity of the term revolution.

28. Cp. H.O.M., 59 and 1042 (= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 557, and Programme of the Communist International, 65); and end of note 14 to this chapter. (See also note 37.)

29. This is not a quotation but a paraphrase. Cp., for example, the passage from Engels' Preface to the first English edition of Capital quoted in note 9 to chapter 17. See also L. Laurat, op. cit., p. 240.

30. The first of the two passages is quoted by L. Laurat, loc. cit.; for the second, cp. H.o.M., 93 (= Karl Marx, The Class Struggle in France 1848-1850. Introduction by F. Engels. Co- operative Publishing Society of Foreign Workers in the U.S.S.R., Moscow 1934, 29). Italics mine.

31. Engels was partly conscious that he had been forced to a change of front since 'History has proved us wrong, and all who thought like us', as he said {H.o.M., 79 = Karl Marx, Klassenkampfe in Frankreich, Vorwaerts, Berlin 1890, 8). But he was conscious mainly of one mistake: that he and Marx had overrated the speed of the development. That the development was, in fact, in a different direction, he never admitted, although he complained of it; cp. text to notes 38-9 to chapter 20, where I quote Engels' paradoxical complaint that the 'working class is actually becoming more and more bourgeois'.

32. Cp. notes 4 and 6 to chapter 7.

33. They may continue for other reasons also; for example, because the tyrant's power depends on the support of a certain section of the ruled. But this does not mean that the tyranny must in fact be a class rule, as the Marxists would say. For even if the tyrant is forced to bribe a certain section of the population, to grant them economic or other advantages, this does not mean that he is forced by this section, or that this section has the power to claim and to enforce these advantages as their right. If there are no institutions in existence enabling that section to enforce its influence, the tyrant may withdraw the benefits enjoyed by this section and seek support from another one.

35. Cp. H.O.M., 45 (= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 545). See also note 21 to this chapter. Cp. further the following passage from i^Q Manifesto (H.o.M., 1)1 = GA, Series I, vol. vi, 538): 'The immediate aim of the Communists is the... conquest of political power by the proletariat. '

(1) Tactical advice that must lead to the loss of the battle of democracy is given in detail by Marx in Address to the Communist League. (H.o.M., 67 = Labour Monthly, September 1922, 143; cp. also note 14 to this chapter and note 44 to chapter 20.) Marx explains there the attitude to be taken up, after democracy has been attained, towards the democratic party with whom, according to the Manifesto (cp. note 14 to this chapter), the Communists have had to establish 'union and agreement'. Marx says: 'In short, from the first moment of victory, we must no longer direct our distrust against the beaten reactionary enemy, but against our former allies' (i.e. the democrats). Marx demands that 'the arming of the whole proletariat with rifles, guns, and ammunition should be carried out at once' and that 'the workers must try to organize themselves into an independent guard, with their own chiefs and general staff. The aim is 'that the bourgeois democratic Government not only immediately loses all backing among the workers, but from the commencement finds itself under the supervision and threats of authorities behind whom stands the entire mass of the working class'.

It is clear that this policy is bound to wreck democracy. It is bound to make the Government turn against those workers who are not prepared to abide by the law, but try to rule by threats. Marx tries to excuse his politics by prophecy (H.o.M., 68 and 67 = Labour Monthly, Sept. 1922, 143): 'As soon as the new Government is established they will commence to fight the workers', and he says: 'In order that this party' (i.e. the democrats) 'whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the first hour of victory, should be frustrated in its nefarious work, it is necessary to organize and to arm the proletariat.' I think that his tactics would produce precisely the nefarious effect he prophesies. They would make his historical prophecy come true. Indeed, if the workers were to proceed in this way, every democrat in his senses would be forced (even if, and particularly if, he wished to promote the cause of the oppressed) to join in what Marx describes as the betrayal of the workers, and to fight against those who were out to wreck the democratic institutions for the protection of the individual from the benevolence of tyrants and Great Dictators.

I may add that the passages quoted are comparatively early utterances of Marx and that his more mature opinions were probably somewhat different, and at any rate more ambiguous. But this does not detract from the fact that these early passages had a lasting influence, and that they have often been acted upon, to the detriment of all concerned.

(2) In connection with point {b) in the text above, a passage from Lenin may be quoted (H.o.M. , 828 = The Proletarian Revolution, 30): '... the working class realizes perfectly well that the bourgeois parliaments are institutions foreign to them, that they are instruments of the oppression of the proletariat by the bourgeoisie, that they are institutions of the hostile class, of the exploiting minority.' It is clear that these stories did not encourage the workers to defend parliamentary democracy against the assault of the fascists.

36. Cp. Lenin, State and Revolution (H.o.M., 744 = State and Revolution, 68): 'Democracy... for the rich, that is the democracy of capitalist society... Marx brilliantly grasped the essence of capitalist democracy when... he said that the oppressed were allowed, once every few years, to decide which particular representatives of the oppressing class should... oppress them!' See also notes 1 and 2 to chapter 17.

37. Lenin writes in Left-Wing Communism (H.o.M., 884 f.; italics mine = V. I. Lenin, Left-Wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder. L.L.L. vol. xvi, 72-73): all attention must be concentrated on the next step... on seeking out the forms of transition or approach to the proletarian revolution. The proletarian vanguard has been ideologically won over... But from this first step it is still a long way to victory... In order that the entire class... may take up such a position, propaganda and agitation alone are not enough. The masses must have their own political experience. Such is the fundamental law of all great revolutions it has been necessary... to realize through their own painful experience... the absolute inevitability of a dictatorship of the extreme reactionaries... as the only alternative to a dictatorship of the proletariat, in order to turn them resolutely towards communism.'

38. As is to be expected, each of the two Marxist parties tries to put the blame for their failure on the other; the one blames the other for its policy of catastrophe, and in its turn is blamed by the latter for keeping up the workers' faith in the possibility of winning the battle of democracy. It is somewhat ironical to find that Marx himself has given an excellent description which fits every detail of this method of blaming the circumstances, and especially the competing party, for one's failure. (The description was, of course, aimed by Marx against a competing leftist group of his time.) Marx writes (H.o.M., 130; last group of italics mine = V. I. Lenin, The Teachings of Karl Marx, L.L.L. vol. i, 55): 'They do not need to consider their own resources too critically. They have merely to give the signal, and the people, with all its inexhaustible resources, will fall upon the oppressors. If, in the actual event, their... powers prove to be sheer impotence, then the fault lies either with the pernicious sophists' (the other party, presumably) 'who split the united people into different hostile camps, or... the whole thing has been wrecked by a detail in its execution, or else an unforeseen accident has, for the time being, spoilt the game. In any case the democrat' (or the antidemocrat) 'comes out of the most disgraceful defeat immaculate, just as he went into it innocent, with the newly won conviction that he is destined to conquer; that neither he himself nor his party have to give up their old standpoint, but, on the contrary, conditions have to ripen, to move in his direction...'

39. I say 'the radical wing', for this historicist interpretation of fascism as being an inevitable stage in the inexorable development was believed in, and defended, by groups far beyond the ranks of the Communists. Even some of the leaders of the Viennese workers who offered a heroic but belated and badly organized resistance to fascism believed faithfully that fascism was a necessary step in the historical development towards socialism. Much as they hated it, they felt compelled to regard even fascism as a step forward, bringing the suffering people nearer to the ultimate goal.

1. The only complete English translation of the three volumes of Capital has nearly 2,500 pages. To these have to be added the three volumes which were published in German under the title Theories of Surplus Value; they contain material, largely historical, which Marx intended to use in Capital.

2. Cp. the opposition between an unrestrained capitalism and interventionism introduced in chapters 16 and 17. (See notes 10 to chapter 16, 22 to chapter 17 and 9 to chapter 18, and text.)

For Lenin's statement, cp. H.o.M., 561 (= The Teachings of Karl Marx, 29, italics mine). It is interesting that neither Lenin nor most of the Marxists appear to realize that society has changed since Marx. Lenin speaks in 1914 of 'contemporary society' as if it were Marx's as well as his contemporary society. But the Manifesto was published in 1848.

3. For all quotations in this paragraph, cp. Capital, 691.

4. Cp. the remarks on these terms made in note 3 to chapter 19.

5. It would do better because the defeatist spirit, which might endanger class consciousness (as mentioned in the text to note 7 to chapter 19), would be less likely to develop.

6. Cp. Capital, 697 ff.

7. The two quotations are from Capital, 698 and 706. The term translated by 'semi-prosperity' would be, in a more literal translation, 'medium prosperity'. I translate 'excessive production' instead of 'over-production' because Marx does not mean 'over-production' in the sense that more is produced than can be sold now, but in the sense that so much is produced that a difficulty of selling it will soon develop.

8. As Parkes puts it; cp. note 19 to chapter 19.

9. The labour theory of value is, of course, very old. My discussion of the value theory, it must be remembered, is confined to the so-called 'objective value theory'; I do not intend to criticize the 'subjective value theory' (which should perhaps better be described as the theory of subjective evaluation, or of acts of choice; cp. note 14 to chapter 14). J. Viner kindly pointed out to me that almost the only connection between Marx's value theory and Ricardo's arises out of Marx's misunderstanding of Ricardo, and that Ricardo never held that, unit for unit, labour had any more creating power than capital.

10. It appears to me certain that Marx never doubted that his 'values' in some way correspond to market prices. The value of a commodity, he taught, is equal to that of another one if the average number of labour hours needed for their production is the same. If one of the two commodities is gold, then its weight can be considered as the price of the other commodity, expressed in gold; and since money is based (by law) upon gold, we thus arrive at the money price of a commodity.

The actual exchange ratios on the market, Marx teaches (see especially the important footnote 1 to p. 153 of Capital), will oscillate about the value ratios; and accordingly, the market price in money will also oscillate about the corresponding value ratio to gold of the commodity in question. 'If the magnitude of value is transformed into price', Marx says, a bit clumsily (Capital, 79; italics mine), 'then this... relation assumes the form of an... exchange ratio to that commodity which functions as money' (i.e. gold). 'In this ratio expresses itself, however, not only the magnitude of the value of the commodity, but also the ups and downs, the more or less, for which special circumstances are responsible'; in other words, prices may fluctuate. 'The possibility... of a derivation of price from... value is therefore inherent in the price form. This is not a defect; on the contrary, it shows that the price form is quite adequate to a method of production in which regularities can manifest themselves only as averages of irregularities It seems to me clear that the 'regularities' of which Marx speaks here are the values, and that he believes that values 'manifest themselves' (or 'assert themselves') only as averages of the actual market prices, which are therefore oscillating about the value.

The reason why I emphasize this is that it has sometimes been denied. G. D. H. Cole, for example, writes in his 'Introduction' (Capital, xxv; italics mine): 'Marx... speaks usually as if commodities had actually a tendency, subsequent to temporary market fluctuations, to exchange at their "values". But he says explicitly (on page 79) that he does not mean this; and in the third volume of Capital he... makes the inevitable divergence of prices and "values" abundantly clear.' But although it is true that Marx does not consider the fluctuations as merely 'temporary', he does hold that commodities have a tendency, subject to market fluctuations, to exchange at their 'values'; for as we have seen in the passage quoted here, and referred to by Cole, Marx does not speak of any divergence between value and price, but describes fluctuations and averages. The position is somewhat different in the third volume of Capital, where (in Chapter IX) the place of the 'value' of a commodity is taken by a new category, the 'production-price', which is the sum of its production cost plus the average rate of surplus value. But even here it remains characteristic of Marx's thinking that this new category, the production-price, is related to the actual market price as a kind of regulator of averages only. It does not determine the market price directly, but it expresses itself (just as does 'value' in the first volume) as an average about which the actual prices oscillate or fluctuate. This may be shown with the help of the following passage (Das Kapital, III/2, pp. 396 f.): 'The market prices rise above or fall below these regulating production-prices, but these oscillations compensate one another... The same principle of regulative averages rules here that has been established by Quetelet for social phenomena in general.' Similarly, Marx speaks there (p. 399) of the 'regulative price i.e. the price about which market prices oscillate'; and on the next page, where he speaks of the influence of competition, he says that he is interested in the 'natural price i.e. the price... that is not regulated by competition, but regulates it.' (Italics mine.) Apart from the fact that the 'natural' price clearly indicates that Marx hopes to find the essence of which the oscillating market prices are the 'forms of appearance' (cp. also note 23 to this chapter), we see that Marx consistently clings to the view that this essence, whether value or production-price, manifests itself as the average of the market prices. See also Das Kapital, III/l, 171 f.

11. Cole, op. cit, xxix, says in his otherwise excellently clear statement of Marx's theory of Surplus Value that it was 'his distinctive contribution to economic doctrine'. But Engels, in his Preface to the second volume of Capital, has shown that this theory was not Marx's, that Marx not only never claimed that it was, but also had dealt with its history (in his Theories of Surplus Value; cp. note 1 to this chapter). Engels quotes from Marx's manuscript in order to show that Marx deals with Adam Smith's and Ricardo's contribution to that theory and quotes at length from the pamphlet. The Source and Remedy of the National Difficulties, mentioned in Capital, 646, in order to show that the main ideas of the doctrine, apart from the Marxian distinction between labour and labour power, can be found there. (Cp. Das Kapital, II, xii-xv.)

12. The first part is called by Marx (cp. Capital, 213 f ) necessary labour time, the second part surplus labour time.

14. Marx's derivation of the doctrine of surplus value is of course closely connected with his criticism of 'formal' freedom, 'formal' justice, etc. Cp. especially notes 17 and 19 to chapter 17, and text. See also the text to the next note.

15. Cp. Capital, 845. See also the passages referred to in the foregoing note.

16. Cp. the text to note 18 (and note 10) to this chapter.

17. See especially chapter X of the third volume of Capital.

18. For this quotation, cp. Capital, 706. From the words 'thus surplus population', the passage follows immediately after the one quoted in the text to note 7 to this chapter. (I have omitted the word 'relative' before 'surplus population', since it is irrelevant in the present context, and perhaps confusing. There seems to be a misprint in the Everyman edition: 'overproduction' instead of 'surplus population'.) The quotation is of interest in connection with the problem of supply and demand, and with Marx's teaching that these must have a 'background' (or 'essence'); cp. notes 10 and 20 to this chapter.

19. It may be mentioned in this connection that the phenomenon in question — misery in a period of rapidly expanding industrialization (or of 'early capitalism'; cp. note 36 below, and text) has recently been explained by a hypothesis which, if it can be upheld, would show that there was a great deal in Marx's theory of exploitation. I have in mind a theory based on Walter Euken's doctrine of the two pure monetary systems (the gold and the credit system), and his method of analysing the various historically given economic systems as 'mixtures' of pure systems. Applying this method, Leonhard Miksch has recently pointed out (in a paper 'Die Geldordnung der Zukunft, Zeitschrift fur das Gesamte Kreditwesen, 1949) that the credit system leads to forced investments, i.e. the consumer is forced to save, to abstain; 'but the capital saved by way of these forced investments', Miksch writes, 'does not belong to those who were forced to abstain from consumption, but to the entrepreneurs'.

If this theory proves acceptable, then Marx's analysis (but neither his 'laws' nor his prophecies) would be vindicated to a considerable extent. For there is only a small difference between Marx's 'surplus value' which, by rights, belongs to the worker but is 'appropriated' or 'expropriated' by the 'capitalist', and Miksch's 'forced savings' which become the property, not of the consumer who was forced to save, but of the 'entrepreneur'. Miksch himself hints that these results explain much of the economic development of the nineteenth century (and of the rise of socialism).

It should be noted that Miksch's analysis explains the relevant facts in terms of imperfections in the competitive system (he speaks of an 'economic monopoly of money creation which is possessed of stupendous power') while Marx attempted to explain corresponding facts with the help of the assumption of a free market, i.e. of competition. (Furthermore, 'consumers' and 'industrial workers' cannot, of course, be completely identified.) But whatever the explanation, the facts — described by Miksch as 'intolerably anti-social' — remain; and it is to Marx's credit, both that he did not accept these facts, and that he tried hard to explain them.

20. Cp. note 10 to this chapter, especially the passage on the 'natural' price (also note 18 and text); it is interesting that in the third volume of Capital, not far from the passages quoted in note 10 to this chapter (see Das Kapital, III/2, 352; italics mine), and in a similar context, Marx makes the following methodological remark: 'All science would be superfluous if the forms of appearance of things coincided with their essences.' This is, of course, pure essentialism. That this essentialism borders on metaphysics is shown in note 24 to this chapter.

It is clear that when Marx speaks repeatedly, especially in the first volume, of the price-form, he has a 'form of appearance' in mind; the essence is 'value'. (Cp. also note 6 to chapter 17 and text.)

21. In Capital, pp. 43 ff.: 'The Mystery of the Fetishistic Character of Commodities.'

22. Cp. Capital, 567 (see also 328), with Marx's summary: 'If the productivity of labour is doubled then, if the ratio of necessary labour to surplus labour remains unaltered,... the only result will be that each of them will represent twice as many use-values' (i.e. commodities) 'as before. These use-values are now twice as cheap as before... Thus it is possible, when the productivity of labour is increasing, that the price of labour power should keep on falling, and yet that this fall should be accompanied by a constant growth in the quantity of the worker's means of subsistence.'

23. If productivity increases more or less generally, then the productivity of the gold companies may also increase; and this would mean that gold, like every other commodity, becomes cheaper if appraised in labour hours. Accordingly, the same would hold for gold as for other commodities; and when Marx says (cp. the foregoing note) that the quantity of the worker's real income increases, this would, in theory, also be true of his income in gold, i.e. in money. (Marx's analysis in Capital, p. 567, of which I have quoted only a summary in the foregoing note, is therefore not correct wherever he speaks of 'prices'; for 'prices' are 'values' expressed in gold, and these may remain constant if productivity increases equally in all lines of production, including the production of gold.)

24. The strange thing about Marx's value theory (as distinct from the English classical school, according to J. Viner) is that it considers human labour as fundamentally different from all other processes in nature, for example, from the labour of animals. This shows clearly that the theory is based ultimately upon a moral theory, the doctrine that human suffering and a human lifetime spent is a thing fundamentally different from all natural processes. We can call this the doctrine of the holiness of human labour. Now I do not deny that this theory is right in the moral sense; that is to say, that we should act according to it. But I also think that an economic analysis should not be based upon a moral or metaphysical or religious doctrine of which the holder is unconscious. Marx who, as we shall see in chapter 22, did not consciously believe in a humanitarian morality, or who repressed such beliefs, was building upon a moralistic basis where he did not suspect it — in his abstract theory of value. This is, of course, connected with his essentialism: the essence of all social and economic relations is human labour.

25. For interventionism, cp. notes 22 to chapter 17 and 9 to chapter 18. (See also note 2 to the present chapter.)

26. For the paradox of freedom in its application to economic freedom, cp. note 20 to chapter 17, where further references are given.

The problem of the free market, mentioned in the text only in its application to the labour market, is of very considerable importance. Generalizing from what has been said in the text, it is clear that the idea of a free market is paradoxical. If the state does not interfere, then other semi-political organizations such as monopolies, trusts, unions, etc., may interfere, reducing the freedom of the market to a fiction. On the other hand, it is most important to realize that without a carefully protected free market, the whole economic system must cease to serve its only rational purpose, that is, to satisfy the demands of the consumer. If the consumer cannot choose; if he must take what the producer offers; if the producer, whether a private producer or the state or a marketing department, is master of the market, instead of the consumer; then the situation must arise that the consumer serves, ultimately, as a kind of money-supply and rubbish-remover for the producer, instead of the producer serving the needs and desires of the consumer.

Here we are clearly faced with an important problem of social engineering: the market must be controlled, but in such a way that the control does not impede the free choice of the consumer and that it does not remove the need for the producers to compete for the favour of the consumer. Economic 'planning' that does not plan for economic freedom in this sense will lead dangerously close to totalitarianism. (Cp. F. A. von Hayek's Freedom and the Economic System, Public Policy Pamphlets, 1939/40.)

27. Cp. note 2 to this chapter, and text.

28. This distinction between machinery serving mainly for the extension and machinery serving mainly for the intensification of production is introduced in the text largely with the aim of making the presentation of the argument more lucid. Apart from that, it is also, I hope, an improvement of the argument.

I may give here a list of the more important passages of Marx, bearing on the trade cycle (t- c), and on its connection with unemployment (u) : Manifesto, 29 f. (t-c). — Capital, 120 (monetary crisis = general depression), 624 (t-c and currency), 694 (u), 698 (t-c), 699 (t-c depending on u; automatism of the cycle), 703-705 (t-c and u in interdependence), 706 f. (u). See also the third volume of Capital, especially chapter XV, section on Surplus of Capital and Surplus of Population, H.o.M., 516-528 (t-c and u) and chapters XXV-XXXII (t-c and currency; cp. especially Das Kapital, III/2, 22 ff.). See also the passage from the second volume of Capital from which a sentence is quoted in note 17 to chapter 17.

29. Cp. the Minutes of Evidence, taken before the Secret Committee of the House of Lords appointed to inquire into the causes of Distress , etc., 1875, quoted m Das Kapital, III/l, pp. 398 ff.

30. Cp. for example the two articles on Budgetary Reform by C. G. F. Simkin in the Australian Economic Record, 1941 and 1942 (see also note 3 to chapter 9). These articles deal with counter cycle policy, and report briefly on the Swedish measures.

31. Cp. Parkes, Marxism — A Post Mortem, especially p. 220, note 6.

32. The quotations are from Das Kapital, III/2, 354 f (I translate 'useful commodities' although 'use-value' would be more literal.)

33. The theory I have in mind (held, or very nearly held, by J. Mill as J. Viner informs me) is frequently alluded to by Marx, who struggled against it without, however, succeeding in making his point quite clear. It can be expressed briefly as the doctrine that all capital reduces ultimately to wages, since the 'immobilized' (or as Marx says, 'constant') capital has been produced, and paid for, in wages. Or in Marx's terminology: There is no constant but only variable capital.

This doctrine has been very clearly and simply presented by Parkes (op. cit, 97): 'All capital is variable capital. This will be plain if we consider a hypothetical industry which controls the whole of its processes of production from the farm or the mine to the finished product, without buying any machinery or raw material from outside. The entire cost of production in such an industry will consist of its wage bill.' And since an economic system as a whole can be considered as such a hypothetical industry, within which machinery (constant capital) is always paid for in terms of wages (variable capital), the sum total of constant capital must form part of the sum total of variable capital.

I do not think that this argument, in which I once believed myself, can invalidate the Marxian position. (This is perhaps the only major point in which I cannot agree with Parkes's excellent criticism.) The reason is this. If the hypothetical industry decides to increase its machinery — not only to replace it, or to make necessary improvements — then we can look upon this process as a typical Marxian process of accumulation of capital by the investment of profits. In order to measure the success of this investment, we should have to consider whether the profits in succeeding years had increased in proportion to it. Some of these new profits may be invested again. Now during the year in which they were invested (or profits were accumulated by conversion into constant capital), they were paid for in the form of variable capital. But once they have been invested, they are, in the following periods, considered as part of the constant capital, since they are expected to contribute proportionally to new profits. If they do not, the rate of profit must fall, and we say that it was a mal-investment. The rate of profit is thus a measure of the success of an investment, of the productivity of the newly added constant capital, which, though originally always paid for in the form of variable capital, none the less becomes constant capital in the Marxian sense, and exerts its influence upon the rate of profit.

34. Cp. chapter XIII of the third volume of Capital, for example, H.o.M., 499: 'We see then, that in spite of the progressive fall in the rate of profit, there may be... an absolute increase in the mass of the produced profit. And this increase may be progressive. And it may not only be so. On the basis of capitalist production, it must be so, aside from temporary fluctuations.'

35. The quotations in this paragraph are from Capital, 708 ff.

36. For Parkes's summary, cp. Marxism — A Post Mortem, p. 102.

It may be mentioned here that the Marxian theory that revolutions depend on misery has been to some extent confirmed in the last century by the outbreak of revolutions in countries in which misery actually increased. But contrary to Marx's prediction, these countries were not those of developed capitalism. They were either peasant countries or countries where capitalism was at a primitive stage of development. Parkes has given a list to substantiate this statement. (Cp. op. cit., 48.) It appears that revolutionary tendencies decrease with the advance of industrialization. Accordingly, the Russian revolution should not be interpreted as premature (nor the advanced countries as over-ripe for revolution), but rather as a product of the typical misery of capitalist infancy and of peasant misery, enhanced by the misery of war and the opportunities of defeat. See also note 19, above.

37. Cp. H.O.M., 507.

In a footnote to this passage (i.e. Das Kapital, III/l, 219), Marx contends that Adam Smith is right, against Ricardo.

The passage from Smith to which Marx probably alludes is quoted further below in the paragraph: it is from the Wealth of Nations (vol. II, p. 95 of the Everyman edition).

Marx quotes a passage from Ricardo (Works, ed. MacCulloch, p. 73 = Ricardo, Everyman edition, p. 78). But there is an even more characteristic passage in which Ricardo holds that the mechanism described by Smith 'cannot... affect the rate of profit' (Principles, 232).

41. This may be an excuse, though only a very unsatisfactory excuse, for certain most depressing remarks of Marx, quoted by Parkes, Marxism — A Post Mortem (213 f , note 3). — They are most depressing since they raise the question whether Marx and Engels were the genuine lovers of freedom one would like them to be; whether they were not more influenced by Hegel's irresponsibility and by his nationalism than one should, from their general teaching, expect.

42. Cp. H.o.M., 295 (= GA, Special Volume, 290-1): 'By more and more transforming the great majority of the population into proletarians, the capitalist mode of production creates the force which... is compelled to carry out this revolution.' For the passage from the Manifesto, cp. H.o.M., 35 (= GA, Series I, vol. vi, 536). — For the following passage, cp. H.o.M., 156 f. (= Der Buergerkrieg in Frankreich, 84).

44. For this policy, cp. Marx's Address to the Communist League , quoted in notes 14 and 35- 37 to chapter 19. (Cp. also, for example, notes 26 f. to that chapter.) See further the following passage from the Address (H.o.M., 70 f; italics mine = Labour Monthly, Sept. 1922, 145-6): 'Thus, for instance, if the petty bourgeoisie purpose to purchase the railways and factories, the workers must demand that such railways and factories shall simply be confiscated by the State without compensation; for they are the property of the reactionaries. If the democrats propose proportional taxation, the workers must demand progressive taxation. If the democrats themselves declare for a moderate progressive tax, the workers must insist on a steeply graduated tax; so steeply graduated as to cause the collapse of large capital. If the democrats propose the regulation of the National Debt, the workers must demand State bankruptcy. The demands of the workers will depend on the proposals and measures of the democrats.' These are the tactics of the Communists, of whom Marx says: 'Their battle-cry must be: "Revolution in permanence!'"

Notes to Chapter Twenty-One

1. Cp. notes 22 to chapter 17 and 9 to chapter 18, and text.

2. Engels says in the Anti-Duhring that Fourier long ago discovered the 'vicious circle' of the capitalist mode of production; cp. H.o.M., 287.

3. Cp. H.O.M., 527 (= Das Kapital, III/l, 242).

4. Cp., for example, Parkes, Marxism — A Post Mortem, pp. 102 ff.

5. This is a question which I wish to leave open.

6. This point has been emphasized by my colleague. Prof C. G. F. Simkin, in discussions.

7. Cp. text to note 11 to chapter 14, and end of note 17 to chapter 17.

The fact that even in Western countries, Christianity is not yet entirely free from the spirit of defending the return to the closed society of reaction and oppression can be seen from the excellent polemic of H. G. Wells against Dean Inge's biased and pro-fascist attitude towards the Spanish civil war. Cp. H. G. Wells, The Common Sense of War and Peace (1940), pp. 38-40. (In referring to Wells's book, I do not wish to associate myself with anything he says on federation, whether critical or constructive; and especially not with the idea propounded on pp. 56 ff., regarding fully empowered world commissions. The fascist dangers involved in this idea seem to me enormous.) On the other hand, there is the opposite danger, that of a pro-communist Church; cp. note 12 to chapter 9.

3. Cp. Kierkegaard, op. cit., 172.

4. But Kierkegaard said something of Luther that may be true of Marx also: 'Luther's corrective idea... produces... the most sophisticated form of... paganism.' (Op. cit., 147.)

9. For these quotations, cp. H.o.M., 248, and 279 (the latter passage is shortened = GA, Special Volume, 97 and 277).

10. Cp. L. Laurat, Marxism and Democracy, p. 16. (Italics mine.)

11. For these two quotations, cp. The Churches Survey Their Task (1937), p. 130, and A. Loewe, The Universities in Transformation (1940), p. 1. With the concluding remark of this chapter, cp. also the views expressed by Parkes in the last sentences of his criticism of Marxism (Marxism— A Post Mortem, 1940, p. 208).

Notes to Chapter Twenty-Three

1. Concerning Mannheim, see especially Ideology and Utopia (quoted here from the German edn, 1929). The terms 'social habitat' and 'total ideology' are both due to Mannheim; the terms 'sociologism' and 'historism' have been mentioned in the last chapter. The idea of a 'social habitat' is Platonic.

For a criticism of Mannheim's Man and Society in an Age of Reconstruction (1941), which combines historicist tendencies with a romantic and even mystical holism, see my The Poverty of Historicism, II (Economica, 1944).

3. This is Mannheim's term (cp. Ideology and Utopia, 1929, p. 35). For the 'freely poised intelligence', see op. cit., p. 123, where this term is attributed to Alfred Weber. For the theory of an intelligentsia loosely anchored in tradition, see op. cit., pp. 121-34, and especially p. 122.

6. The analogy between the psycho -analytic method and that of Wittgenstein is mentioned by Wisdom, 'Other Minds' (Mind, vol. 49, p. 370, note): 'A doubt such as "I can never really know what another person is feeling" may arise from more than one of these sources. This over-determination of sceptical symptoms complicates their cure. The treatment is like psycho-analytic treatment (to enlarge Wittgenstein's analogy) in that the treatment is the diagnosis and the diagnosis is the description, the very full description, of the symptoms.' And so on. (I may remark that, using the word 'know' in the ordinary sense, we can, of course, never know what another person is feeling. We can only make hypotheses about it. This solves the so-called problem. It is a mistake to speak here of doubt, and a still worse mistake to attempt to remove the doubt by a semiotico-analytic treatment.)

7. The psycho-analysts seem to hold the same of the individual psychologists, and they are probably right. Cp. Freud's History of the Psycho-Analytic Movement (1916), p. 42, where Freud records that Adler made the following remark (which fits well within Adler's individual-psychological scheme, according to which feelings of inferiority are predominantly important): 'Do you believe that it is such a pleasure for me to stand in your shadow my whole life?' This suggests that Adler had not successfully applied his theories to himself, at that time at least. But the same seems to be true of Freud: None of the founders of psycho-analysis were psycho-analysed. To this objection, they usually replied that they had psycho-analysed themselves. But they would never have accepted such an excuse from anybody else; and, indeed, rightly so.

8. For the following analysis of scientific objectivity, cp. my The Logic of Scientific Discovery, section 8 (pp. 44 ff.).

9. I wish to apologize to the Kantians for mentioning them in the same breath as the Hegelians.

13. For the first of these two quotations, cp. op. cit., 161. (For simplicity's sake, I translate 'conscious' for 'reflexive'.) For the second, cp. op. cit, 166.

14. Cp. Handbook of Marxism, 255 (= GA, Special Volume, 117-18): 'Hegel was the first to state correctly the relation between freedom and necessity. To him, freedom is the appreciation of necessity.' For Hegel's own formulation of his pet idea, cp. Hegel Selections, 213 (= Werke, 1832-1887, vi, 310): 'The truth of necessity, therefore, is freedom.' 361 (= WW, xi, 46): '... the Christian principle of self-consciousness — Freedom.' 362 (= WW, xi, 47): 'The essential nature of freedom, which involves in it absolute necessity, is to be displayed as the attainment of a consciousness of itself (for it is in its very nature, self- consciousness) and it thereby realizes its existence.' And so on.

1. I am here using the term 'rationahsm' in opposition to 'irrationahsm' and not to 'empiricism'. Carnap writes in his Der Logische Aufbau der Welt (1928), p. 260: 'The word "rationalism" is now often meant... in a modern sense: in contradistinction to irrationahsm.'

In using the term 'rationalism' in this way, I do not wish to suggest that the other way of using this term, namely, in opposition to empiricism, is perhaps less important. On the contrary, I believe that this opposition characterizes one of the most interesting problems of philosophy. But I do not intend to deal with it here; and I feel that, in opposition to empiricism, we might do better to use another term — perhaps 'intellectualism' or 'intellectual intuitionism' — in place of 'rationalism' in the Cartesian sense. I may mention in this context that I do not define the terms 'reason' or 'rationalism'; I am using them as labels, taking care that nothing depends on the words used. Cp. chapter 11, especially note 50. (For the reference to Kant, see note 56 to chapter 12, and text.)

2. *This is what I tried to do in 'Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition' ( The Rationalist Annual, 1949, pp. 36 ff., and now in Conjectures and Refutations, pp. 120 ff.).

In Pythagoras, Heraclitus, Parmenides, Plato, mystical and rationalist elements are mixed. Plato especially, in spite of all his emphasis on 'reason', incorporated into his philosophy such a weighty admixture of irrationahsm that it nearly ousted the rationalism he inherited from Socrates. This enabled the Neo-Platonists to base their mysticism on Plato; and most subsequent mysticism goes back to these sources.

It may perhaps be accidental, but it is in any case remarkable that there is still a cultural frontier between Western Europe and the regions of Central Europe which coincide very nearly with those regions that did not come under the administration of Augustus' Roman Empire, and that did not enjoy the blessings of the Roman peace, i.e. of the Roman civilization. The same 'barbarian' regions are particularly prone to be affected by mysticism, even though they did not invent mysticism. Bernard of Clairvaux had his greatest successes in Germany, where later Eckhart and his school flourished, and also Boehme.

Much later Spinoza, who attempted to combine Cartesian intellectualism with mystical tendencies, rediscovered the theory of a mystical intellectual intuition, which, in spite of Kant's strong opposition, led to the post-Kantian rise of 'Idealism', to Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel. Practically all modern irrationalism goes back to the latter, as is briefly indicated in chapter 12. (Cp. also notes 6, 29-32 and 58, below, and notes 32-33 to chapter 11, and the cross-references on mysticism there given.)

5. With the 'mechanical activities', cp. notes 21 and 22 to this chapter.

6. I say 'discarded' in order to cover the views (1) that such an assumption would be false, (2) that it would be unscientific (or impermissible), though it might perhaps be accidentally true, (3) that it would be 'senseless' or 'meaningless', for example in the sense of Wittgenstein's Tractatus; cp. note 51 to chapter 12, and note 8 (2) to the present chapter.

In connection with the distinction between 'critical' and 'uncritical' rationalism, it may be mentioned that the teaching of Duns Scotus as well as of Kant could be interpreted as approaching 'critical' rationalism. (I have in mind their doctrines of the 'primacy of will', which may be interpreted as the primacy of an irrational decision.)

7. In this and the following note a few remarks on paradoxes will be made, especially on the paradox of the liar. In introducing these remarks, it may be said that the so-called 'logical' and 'semantical' paradoxes are no longer merely playthings for the logicians. Not only have they proved to be important for the development of mathematics, but they are also becoming important in other fields of thought. There is a definite connection between these paradoxes and such problems as the paradox of freedom which, as we have seen (cp. note 20 to chapter 17 and notes 4 and 6 to chapter 7), is of considerable significance in political philosophy. In point (4) of this note, it will be briefly shown that the various paradoxes of sovereignty (cp. note 6 to chapter 7, and text) are very similar to the paradox of the liar. On the modern methods of solving these paradoxes (or perhaps better: of constructing languages in which they do not occur), I shall not make any comments here, since it would take us beyond the scope of this book. (1) The paradox of the liar can be formulated in many ways. One of them is this. Let us assume that somebody says one day: 'All that I say to-day is a lie'; or more precisely: 'All statements I make to-day are false'; and that he says nothing else the whole day. Now if we ask ourselves whether he spoke the truth, this is what we find. If we start with the assumption that what he said was true, then we arrive, considering what he said, at the result that it must have been false. And if we start with the assumption that what he said was false, then we must conclude, considering what he said, that it was true.

(2) Paradoxes are sometimes called 'contradictions'. But this is perhaps slightly misleading. An ordinary contradiction (or a self-contradiction) is simply a logically false statement, such as 'Plato was happy yesterday and he was not happy yesterday'. If we assume that such a sentence is false, no further difficulty arises. But of a paradox, we can neither assume that it is true nor that it is false, without getting involved in difficulties.

(3) There are, however, statements which are closely related to paradoxes, but which are, more strictly speaking, only self-contradictions. Take for example the statement: 'All statements are false.' If we assume that this statement is true, then we arrive, considering what it says, at the result that it is false. But if we assume that it is false, then we are out of the difficulty; for this assumption leads only to the result that not all statements are false, or in other words, that there are some statements — at least one — ^that are true. And this result is harmless; for it does not imply that our original statement is one of the true ones. (This does not imply that we can, in fact, construct a language free of paradoxes in which 'AH statements are false' or 'All statements are true' can be formulated.)

In spite of the fact that this statement 'AH propositions are false' is not really a paradox, it may be called, by courtesy, 'a form of the paradox of the liar', because of its obvious resemblance to the latter; and indeed, the old Greek formulation of this paradox (Epimenides the Cretan says: 'All Cretans always he') is, in this terminology, rather 'a form of the paradox of the liar' i.e. a contradiction rather than a paradox. (Cp. also next note, and note 54 to this chapter, and text.)

(4) I shall now show briefly the similarity between the paradox of the liar and the various paradoxes of sovereignty , for example, of the principle that the best or the wisest or the majority should rule. (Cp. note 6 to chapter 7 and text.)

C. H. Langford has described various ways of putting the paradox of the Har, among them the following. We consider two statements, made by two people, A and B.

A says: 'What B says is true.'

B says: 'What A says is false.'

By applying the method described above, we easily convince ourselves that each of these sentences is paradoxical. Now we consider the following two sentences, of which the first is the principle that the wisest should rule:

(A) The principle says: What the wisest says under (B) should be law.

(B) The wisest says: What the principle states under (A) should not be law.

8. (1) That the principle of avoiding all presuppositions is 'a form of the paradox of the liar' in the sense of note 7 (3) to this chapter, and therefore self-contradictory, will be easily seen if we describe it like this. A philosopher starts his investigation by assuming without argument the principle: 'All principles assumed without argument are impermissible.' It is clear that if we assume that this principle is true, we must conclude, considering what it says, that it is impermissible. (The opposite assumption does not lead to any difficulty.) The remark 'a counsel of perfection' alludes to the usual criticism of this principle which was laid down, for example, by Husserl. J. Laird (Recent Philosophy, 1936, p. 121) writes about this principle that it 'is a cardinal feature of Husserl's philosophy. Its success may be more doubtful, for presuppositions have a way of creeping in.' So far, I fully agree; but not quite with the next remark: '... the avoidance of all presuppositions may well be a counsel of perfection, impracticable in an inadvertent world.' (See also note 5 to chapter 25.)

(2) We may consider at this place a few further 'principles' which are, in the sense of note 7 (3) to this chapter, 'forms of the paradox of the liar', and therefore self-contradictory.

(a) From the point of view of social philosophy, the following 'principle of sociologism' (and the analogous 'principle of historism') are of interest. They can be formulated in this way. 'No statement is absolutely true, and all statements are inevitably relative to the social (or historical) habitat of their originators.' It is clear that the considerations of note 7 (3) apply practically without alteration. For if we assume that such a principle is true, then it follows that it is not true but only 'relative to the social or historical habitat of its originator'. See also note 53 to this chapter, and text.

(b) Some examples of this kind can be found in Wittgenstein's Tractatus. The one is Wittgenstein's proposition (quoted more fully in note 46 to chapter 11): 'The totality of true propositions is... the totality of natural science.' Since this proposition does not belong to natural science (but, rather, to a meta-science, i.e. a theory that speaks about science) it follows that it asserts its own untruth, and is therefore contradictory.

Furthermore, it is clear that this proposition violates Wittgenstein's own principle (Tractatus, p. 57), 'No proposition can say anything about itself...'

* But even this last quoted principle which I shall call 'W' turns out to be a form of the paradox of the liar, and to assert its own untruth. (It therefore can hardly be — as Wittgenstein believes it to be — equivalent to, or a summary of, or a substitute for, 'the whole theory of types', i.e. Russell's theory, designed to avoid the paradoxes which he discovered by dividing expressions which look like propositions into three classes — true propositions, false propositions, and meaningless expressions or pseudo-propositions.) For Wittgenstein's principle W may be re-formulated as follows: (W+) Every expression (and especially one that looks like a proposition) which contains a reference to itself — either by containing its own name or an individual variable ranging over a class to which it itself belongs — is not a proposition (but a meaningless pseudo- proposition).

Now let us assume that W+ is true. Then, considering the fact that it is an expression, and that it refers to every expression, it cannot be a proposition, and is therefore a fortiori not true.

The assumption that it is true is therefore untenable; W + cannot be true. But this does not show that it must be false; for both, the assumption that it is false and the other that it is a meaningless (or senseless) expression, do not involve us in immediate difficulties.

Wittgenstein might perhaps say that he saw this himself when he wrote (p. 189; cp. note 51 (1) to chapter 11): 'My propositions are elucidatory in this way: he who understands me finally recognizes them as senseless...'; in any case, we may conjecture that he would incline to describing as meaningless rather than false. I believe, however, that it is not meaningless but simply false. Or more precisely, I believe that in every formalized language (e.g. in one in which Goedel's undecidable statements can be expressed) which contains means for speaking about its own expressions, and in which we have names of classes of expressions such as 'propositions' and 'non-propositions', the formalization of a statement which, like W+, asserts its own meaninglessness, will be self-contradictory and neither meaningless nor genuinely paradoxical; it will be a meaningful proposition merely because it asserts of every expression of a certain kind that it is not a proposition (i.e. not a well- formed formula); and such an assertion will be true or false, but not meaningless, simply because to be (or not to be) a well-formed proposition is a property of expressions. For example, 'AH expressions are meaningless' will be self-contradictory, but not genuinely paradoxical, and so will be the expression 'The expression x is meaningless', if we substitute for 'x' a name of this expression. Modifying an idea of J. N. Findlay's, we can write:

The expression obtained by substituting for the variable in the following expression, 'The expression obtained by substituting for the variable in the following expression x the quotation name of this expression, is not a statement', the quotation name of this expression, is not a statement.

And what we have just written turns out to be a self-contradictory statement. (If we write twice 'is a false statement' instead of 'is not a statement', we obtain a paradox of the liar; if we write 'is a non-demonstrable statement', we obtain a Goedehan statement in J. N. Findlay's writing.)

To sum up. Contrary to first impressions, we find that a theory which implies its own meaninglessness is not meaningless but false, since the predicate 'meaningless', as opposed to 'false', does not give rise to paradoxes. And Wittgenstein's theory is therefore not meaningless, as he believes, but simply false (or, more specifically, self-contradictory).

(3) It has been claimed by some positivists that a tripartition of the expressions of a language into (i) true statements, (ii) false statements, and (iii) meaningless expressions (or, better, expressions other than well-formed statements), is more or less 'natural' and that it provides, because of their meaninglessness, for the elimination of the paradoxes and, at the same time, of metaphysical systems. The following may show that this tripartition is not enough.

The General's Chief Counter-Espionage Officer is provided with three boxes, labelled (i) 'General's Box', (ii) 'Enemy's Box' (to be made accessible to the enemy's spies), and (iii) 'Waste Paper', and is instructed to distribute all information arriving before 12 o'clock among these three boxes, according to whether this information is (i) true, (ii) false, or (iii) meaningless.

For a time, he receives information which he can easily distribute (among it true statements of the theory of natural numbers, etc., and perhaps statements of logic such as L: 'From a set of true statements, no false statement can be validly derived'). The last message M, arriving with the last incoming mail just before 12 o'clock, disturbs him a little, for M reads: 'From the set of all statements placed, or to be placed, within the box labelled "General's Box", the statement "0 = 1" cannot validly be derived.' At first, the Chief Counter-Espionage Officer hesitates whether he should not put M into box (ii). But since he realizes that, if put into (ii), M would supply the enemy with valuable true information, he ultimately decides to put M into (i).

But this turns out to be a big mistake. For the symbolic logicians (experts in logistic?) on the General's staff, after formalizing (and 'arithmetizing') the contents of the General's box, discover that they obtain a set of statements which contains an assertion of its own consistency; and this, according to Goedel's second theorem on decidability, leads to a contradiction, so that '0 = 2' can actually be deduced from the presumably true information supplied to the General.

The solution of this difficulty consists in the recognition of the fact that the tripartition-claim is unwarranted, at least for ordinary languages; and we can see from Tarski's theory of truth that no definite number of boxes will suffice. At the same time we find that 'meaninglessness' in the sense of 'not belonging to the well-formed formulae' is by no means an indication of 'nonsensical talk' in the sense of 'words which just don't mean anything, although they may pretend to be deeply significant'; but to have revealed that metaphysics was just of this character was the chief claim of the positivists.*

9. It appears that it was the difficulty connected with the so-called 'problem of induction' which led Whitehead to the disregard of argument displayed in Process and Reality. (Cp. also notes 35-7 to this chapter.)

10. It is a moral decision and not merely 'a matter of taste' since it is not a private affair but affects other men and their lives. (For the opposition between esthetic matters of taste and moral problems, cp. text to note 6 to chapter 5, and chapter 9 especially text to notes 10- 11.) The decision with which we are faced is most important from the point of view that the 'learned', who are faced with it, act as intellectual trustees for those who are not faced with it.

11. It is, I believe, perhaps the greatest strength of Christianity that it appeals fundamentally not to abstract speculation but to the imagination, by describing in a very concrete manner the suffering of man.

12. Kant, the great equalitarian in regard to moral decisions, has emphasized the blessings involved in the fact of human inequality. He saw in the variety and individuality of human characters and opinions one of the main conditions of moral as well as material progress.

13. The allusion is to A. Huxley's Brave New World.

14. For the distinction between facts, and decisions or demands, cp. text to notes 5 ff. to chapter 4. For the 'language of political demands' (or 'proposals' in the sense of L. J. Russell) cp. text to notes 41-43, chapter 6 and note 5(3) to chapter 5.

I should be inclined to say that the theory of the innate intellectual equality of all men is false; but since such men as Niels Bohr contend that the influence of environment is alone responsible for individual differences, and since there are no sufficient experimental data for deciding this question, 'probably false' is perhaps all that should be said.

15. See, for example, the passage from Plato's Statesman, quoted in the text to note 12 to chapter 9. Another such passage is Republic, 409e-410a. After having spoken (409b & c) of the 'good judge... who is good because of the goodness of his soul', Plato continues (409e, f ), 'And are you not going to establish physicians and judges... who are to look after those citizens whose physical and mental constitution is healthy and good? Those whose physical health is bad, they will leave to die. And those whose soul is bad-natured and incurable, they will actually kill.' — 'Yes,' he said, 'since you have proved that this is the best thing, both for those to whom it happens, and for the state.'

16. Cp. notes 58 to chapter 8 and 28 to chapter 10.

17. An example is H. G. Wells, who gave to the first chapter of his book, The Common Sense of War and Peace, the excellent title: 'Grown Men Do Not Need Leaders'. (Cp. also note 2 to chapter 22.)

18. For the problem and the paradox of tolerance, cp. note 4 to chapter 7.

19. The 'world' is not rational, but it is the task of science to rationalize it. 'Society' is not rational, but it is the task of the social engineer to rationalize it. (This does not mean, of course, that he should 'direct' it, or that centralized or collectivist 'planning' is desirable.) Ordinary language is not rational, but it is our task to rationalize it, or at least to keep up its standards of clarity. The attitude here characterized could be described as 'pragmatic rationalism'. This pragmatic rationalism is related to an uncritical rationalism and to irrationalism in a similar way as critical rationalism is related to these two. For an uncritical rationalism may argue that the world is rational and that the task of science is to discover this rationality, while an irrationalist may insist that the world, being fundamentally irrational, should be experienced and exhausted by our emotions and passions (or by our intellectual intuition) rather than by scientific methods. As opposed to this, pragmatic rationalism may recognize that the world is not rational, but demand that we submit or subject it to reason, as far as possible. Using Carnap's words (Der Logische Aufbau, etc., 1928, p. vi) one could describe what I call 'pragmatic rationalism' as 'the attitude which strives for clarity everywhere but recognizes the never fully understandable or never fully rational entanglement of the events of life'.

20. For the problem of the standards of clarity of our language, cp. the last note and note 30 to chapter 12.

21. Industrialization and the Division of Labour are attacked, for example, by Toynbee, A Study of History, vol. I, pp. 2 ff. Toynbee complains (p. 4) that 'the prestige of the Industrial System imposed itself upon the "intellectual workers" of the Western World and when they have attempted to "work" these materials "up" into "manufactured" or "semi- manufactured" articles, they have had recourse, once again, to the Division of Labour...'In another place (p. 2) Toynbee says of physical scientific periodicals: 'Those periodicals were the Industrial System "in book form", with its Division of Labour and its sustained maximum output of articles manufactured from raw materials mechanically.' (Italics mine.) Toynbee emphasizes (p. 3, note 2) with the Hegelian Dilthey that the spiritual sciences at least should keep apart from these methods. (He quotes Dilthey, who said: 'The real categories... are nowhere the same in the sciences of the Spirit as they are in the sciences of Nature.')

Toynbee's interpretation of the division of labour in the field of science seems to me just as mistaken as Dilthey's attempt to open up a gulf between the methods of the natural and the social sciences. What Toynbee calls 'division of labour' could better be described as co- operation and mutual criticism. Cp. text to notes 8 f. to chapter 23, and Macmurray's comments upon scientific co-operation quoted in the present chapter, text to note 26. (For Toynbee's anti-rationalism, cp. also note 61 to chapter 11.)

22. Cp. Adolf Keller, Church and State on the European Continent (Beckly Social Service Lecture, 1936). I owe it to Mr. L. Webb that my attention has been drawn to this interesting passage.

I may draw attention to the fact that in contradistinction to the present fashion (cp. notes 51 f to chapter 11), I attempt to take Keller's remarks seriously and question their truth, instead of dismissing them, as the positivist fashion would demand, as meaningless.

24. Cp. note 70 to chapter 10 and text, and note 61 to chapter 11.

25. Cp. Matthew 7, 15 f: 'Beware of false prophets, which come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves. Ye shall know them by their fruits.'

26. The two passages are from J. Macmurray, The Clue to History (1938), pp. 86 and 192. (For my disagreement with Macmurray cp. text to note 16 to chapter 25.)

27. Cp. L. S. Stebbing's book. Philosophy and the Physicists, and my own brief remark on the Hegelianism of Jeans in 'What is Dialectic?' (Mind, 1940, 49, p. 420; now in Conjectures and Refutations, p. 330).

28. Cp., for example, notes 8-12 to chapter 7, and text.

29. Cp. chapter 10, especially the end of that chapter, i.e. notes 59-70, and text (see especially the reference to McTaggart in note 59); the note to the Introduction; notes 33 to chapter 11 and 36 to chapter 12; notes 4, 6, and 58 to the present chapter. See also Wittgenstein's insistence (quoted in note 32 to the present chapter) that the contemplation of, or the feeling for, the world as a limited whole is the mystical feeling.

A much-discussed recent work on mysticism and its proper role in politics is Aldous Huxley's Grey Eminence. It is interesting mainly because the author does not seem to realize that his own story of the mystic and politician. Father Joseph, flatly refutes the main thesis of his book. This thesis is that training in mystical practice is the only educational discipline known that is capable of securing to men that absolutely firm moral and religious ground which is so dearly needed by people who influence public policy. But his own story shows that Father Joseph, in spite of his training, fell into temptation — the usual temptation of those who wield power — and that he was unable to resist; absolute power corrupted him absolutely. That is to say, the only historical evidence discussed at any length by the author disproves his thesis completely; which, however, does not seem to worry him.

32. Cp. Wittgenstein's Tractatus, p. 187: 'Not how the world is, is the mystical, but that it is. — The contemplation of the world sub specie aeterni is its contemplation as a limited whole. — The feeling of the world as a limited whole is the mystical feeling.' One sees that Wittgenstein's mysticism is typically holistic. — For other passages of Wittgenstein (loc. cit.) like: 'There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical', cp. Carnap's criticism in his Logical Syntax of Language (1937), pp. 314 f. Cp. also note 25 to chapter 25, and text. See also note 29 to the present chapter and the cross-references given there.

33. Cp. chapter 10, for example notes 40, 41. The tribal and esoteric tendency of this kind of philosophy may be exemplified by a quotation from H. Blueher (cp. Kolnai, The War against the West, p. 74, italics mine): 'Christianity is emphatically an aristocratic creed, free of morals, unteachable. The Christians know one another by their exterior type; they form a set in human society who never fail in mutual understanding, and who are understood by none but themselves. They constitute a secret league. Furthermore, the kind of love that operates in Christianity is that which illuminates the pagan temples; it bears no relation to the Jewish invention of so-called love of mankind or love of one's neighbours.' Another example may be taken from E. von Salomon's book, The Outlaws (quoted also in note 90 to chapter 12; the present quotation is from p. 240; italics mine): 'We recognized one another in an instant, though we came from all parts of the Reich, having got wind of skirmishes and of danger.'

34. This remark is not meant in a historicist sense. I do not mean to prophesy that the conflict will play no part in future developments. I only mean that by now we could have learned that the problem does not exist, or that it is, at any rate, insignificant as compared with the problem of the evil religions, such as totalitarianism and racialism, with which we are faced.

35. I am alluding to Principia Mathematica, by A. N. Whitehead and B. Russell. (Whitehead says, m Process and Reality, p. 10, note 1, that the 'introductory discussions are practically due to Russell, and in the second edition wholly so'.)

36. Cp. the reference to Hegel (and many others, among them Plato and Aristotle) in A. N. Whitehead, Process and Reality, p. 14.

Concerning the attitude of take it or leave it, described in the next paragraph, cp. note 53 to chapter 11.

40. Cp. Whitehead, op. cit., 492. Two of the other antitheses are: 'It is as true to say that the World is immanent in God, as that God is immanent in the World... It is as true to say that God creates the World, as that the World creates God.' This is very reminiscent of the German mystic Scheffler (Angelus Silesius), who wrote: 'I am as great as God, God is as small as me, I cannot without him, nor he without me, be.'

Concerning my remark, later in the paragraph, that I just do not understand what the author wishes to convey, I may say that it was only with great reluctance that I wrote this. The 'I do not understand' criticism is a rather cheap and dangerous kind of sport. I simply wrote these words because, in spite of my efforts, they remained true.

43. Toynbee says (op. cit, 537) of the 'traditionally orthodox minds' that they 'will see our investigation as an attack upon the historicity of the story of Jesus Christ as it is presented in the Gospels'. And he holds (p. 538) that God reveals himself through poetry as well as through truth; according to his theory, God has 'revealed himself in folk-lore'.

44. Following up this attempt to apply Toynbee 's methods to himself, one could ask whether his Study of History which he has planned to consist of thirteen volumes is not just as much what he terms a tour de force as the 'histories like the several series of volumes now in course of publication by the Cambridge University Press ' — undertakings which he brilliantly compares (vol. I, p. 4) to 'stupendous tunnels and bridges and dams and liners and battleships and skyscrapers'. And one could ask whether Toynbee 's tour de force is not, more particularly, the manufacturing of what he calls a 'time machine', i.e. an escape into the past. (Cp. especially Toynbee's medievalism, briefly discussed in note 61 to chapter 11. Cp. further note 54 to the present chapter.)

45. I have not so far seen more than the first six volumes. Einstein is one of the few scientists mentioned.

46. Toynbee, op. cit., vol. II, 178.

47. Toynbee, op. cit., vol. V, 581 ff. (Italics mine.)

In connection with Toynbee's neglect, mentioned in the text, of the Marxian doctrines and especially of the Communist Manifesto , it may be said that on p. 179 (note 5) of this volume, Toynbee writes: 'The Bolshevik or Majoritarian wing of the Russian Social-Democratic Party renamed itself "the Russian Communist Party" (in homage to the Paris Commune of a.d. 1871) in March, 1918...'A similar remark can be found in the same volume, p. 582, note i.

But this is not correct. The change of name (which was submitted by Lenin to the party conference of April, 1917; cp. Handbook of Marxism, 783; cp. also p. 787) referred, obviously enough, to the fact that 'Marx and Engels called themselves Communists', as Lenin puts it, and to the Communist Manifesto.

48. Cp. Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific (see note 9 to chapter 13). For two historical roots of Marx's communism (Plato's and, perhaps, Pythagoras' — archaism, and the Acts, which seem to be influenced by it) see especially note 29 to chapter 5; see also notes 30 to chapter 4, 34-36 to chapter 6, and notes 3 and 8 to chapter 13 (and text).

49. Cp. Toynbee, op. cit, vol. V, 587.

50. Cp. chapter 22, especially text to notes 1-4, and the end of that chapter.

51. The passage is not isolated; Toynbee very often expresses his respect for the 'verdict of history'; a fact that is in keeping with his doctrine that it is 'the claim of Christianity... that God has revealed Himself in history'. This 'Neo-Protestant doctrine' (as K. Barth calls it) will be discussed in the next chapter. (Cp. especially note 12 to that chapter.)

In connection with Toynbee 's treatment of Marx, it may be mentioned that his whole approach is strongly influenced by Marxism. He says (op. cit., vol. I, p. 41, note 3): 'More than one of these Marxian coinages have become current even among people who reject the Marxian dogmas.' This statement refers especially to the use of the word 'proletariat'. But it covers more than the mere use of words.

52. Cp. Toynbee, op. cit., vol. Ill, 476. The passage refers back to vol. I, part I, A, 'The Relativity of Historical Thought'. (The problem of the 'relativity' of historical thought will be discussed in the next chapter.) For an excellent early criticism of historical relativism (and historicism), see H. Sidgwick's Philosophy — Its Scope and Relations (1902), Lecture IX, especially pp. 180 f.

53. For if all thought is in such a sense 'inevitably relative' to its historical habitat that it is not 'absolutely true' (i.e. not true), then this must hold for this contention as well. Thus it cannot be true, and therefore not an inevitable 'Law of Human Nature'. Cp. also note 8 (2, a) to this chapter.

54. For the contention that Toynbee escapes into the past, cp. note 44 to this chapter and note 61 to chapter 11 (on Toynbee's medievalism). Toynbee himself gives an excellent criticism of archaism, and I fully agree with his attack (vol. VI, 65 f ) upon nationalist attempts to revive ancient languages, especially in Palestine. But Toynbee's own attack upon industrialism (cp. note 21 to the present chapter) seems to be no less archaistic. — For an escape into the future, I have no other evidence than Toynbee's announced prophetic title of part XII of his work: The Prospects of the Western Civilization.

56. Cp. op. cit., vol. V, 590. — The passage quoted next is from the same volume, p. 588.

57. Toynbee, op. cit., vol. VI, 13.

58. Cp. Toynbee, vol. VI, 12 f (The reference is to Bergson's Two Sources of Morality and Religion.)

The following historicist quotation from Toynbee (vol. V, 585; italics mine) is interesting in this context: 'Christians believe — and a study of History assuredly proves them right — that the brotherhood of Man is impossible for Man to achieve in any other way than by enrolling himself as a citizen of a Civitas Dei which transcends the human world and has God himself for its king.' How can a study of history prove such a claim? Is it not a highly responsible matter to assert that it can be proved?

Concerning Bergson's Two Sources, I fully agree that there is an irrational or intuitive element in every creative thought; but this element can be found in rational scientific thought also. Rational thought is not non-intuitive; it is, rather, intuition submitted to tests and checks (as opposed to intuition run wild). Applying this to the problem of the creation of the open society, I admit that men like Socrates were inspired by intuition; but while I grant this fact, I believe that it is their rationality by which the founders of the open society are distinguished from those who tried to arrest its development, and who were also, like Plato, inspired by intuition — only by an intuition unchecked by reasonableness (in the sense in which this term has been used in the present chapter). See also the note to the Introduction.

3. The 'bucket theory of the mind' has been mentioned in chapter 23. (*For the 'searchlight theory of science', see also my 'Towards a Rational Theory of Tradition,' now in my Conjectures and Refutations , especially pp. 127 f *) The 'searchlight theory' contains, perhaps, just those elements of Kantianism that are tenable. We might say that Kant's mistake was to think the searchlight itself incapable of improvement; and that he did not see that some searchlights (theories) may fail to illuminate facts which others bring out clearly. But this is how we give up using certain searchlights, and make progress.

4. Cp. note 23 to chapter 8.

5. For the attempt to avoid all presuppositions, cp. the criticism (of Husserl) in note 8 (1) to chapter 24, and text. The naive idea that it is possible to avoid presupposition (or a point of view) has also been attacked on different lines by H. Gomperz. (Cp. Weltanschauungslehre, I, 1905, pp. 33 and 35; my translation is perhaps a little free.) Gomperz's attack is directed against radical empiricists. (Not against Husserl.) 'A philosophic or scientific attitude towards facts', Gomperz writes, 'is always an attitude of thought, and not merely an attitude of enjoying the facts in the manner of a cow, or of contemplating facts in the manner of a painter, or of being overwhelmed by the facts in the manner of a visionary. We must therefore assume that the philosopher is not satisfied with the facts as they are, but thinks about them... Thus it seems clear that behind that philosophical radicalism which pretends ... to go back to immediate facts or data, there is always hidden an uncritical reception of traditional doctrines. For some thoughts about the facts must occur even to these radicals; but since they are unconscious of them to such a degree as to hold that they merely admit the facts, we have no choice but to assume that their thoughts are... uncritical' (Cp. also the same author's remarks on Interpretation in Erkenntnis, vol. 7, pp. 225 ff.)

7. (1) To my knowledge, the theory of causality sketched here in the text was first presented in my book, Logik der Forschung (1935) — now translated as The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959). See pp. 59 f. of the translation. As here translated, the original brackets have been eliminated, and numbers in brackets as well as four brief passages in brackets have been added, partly in order to make a somewhat compressed passage more intelligible, and partly (in the case of the two last brackets) to make allowance for a point of view I had not clearly seen in 1935, the point of view of what A. Tarski has called 'semantics'. (See, e.g., his Grundlegung der wissenschaftlichen Semantik, in Actes du Congres International Philosophique, vol. Ill, Paris, 1937, pp. 1 ff., and R. Carnap, Introduction to Semantics, 1942.) Owing to Tarski's development of the foundations of semantics, I no longer hesitate (as I did when writing the book referred to) to make full use of the terms 'cause' and 'effect'. For these can be defined, using Tarski's concept of truth, by a semantic definition such as the following: Events is the cause of events, and events the effect of event ^4, if and only if there exists a language in which we can formulate three propositions, u, a, and b, such that w is a true universal law, a describes A, and b describes B, and Z) is a logical consequence of u and a. (Here the term 'event' or 'fact' may be defined by a semantic version of my definition of 'event' in my The Logic of Scientific Discovery, pp. 88 ff., say, by the following definition: An event E is the common designatum of a class of mutually translatable singular statements.)

(2) A few historical remarks concerning the problem of cause and effect may be added here. The Aristotelian concept of cause (viz., his formal and material cause, and his efficient cause; the final cause does not interest us here, even though my remark holds good for it too) is typically essentialistic; the problem is to explain change or motion, and it is explained by reference to the hidden structure of things. This essentialism is still to be found in Bacon's, Descartes', Locke's, and even Newton's views on this matter; but Descartes' theory opens the way to a new view. He saw the essence of all physical bodies in their spatial extension or geometrical shape, and concluded from this that the only way in which bodies can act upon one another is by pushing; one moving body necessarily pushes another from its place because both are extended, and therefore cannot fill the same space. Thus the effect follows the cause by necessity, and all truly causal explanation (of physical events) must be in terms of push. This view was still assumed by Newton, who accordingly said about his own theory of gravitation — which, of course, employs the idea of pull rather than push — that nobody who knows anything of philosophy could possibly consider it a satisfactory explanation; and it still remains influential in physics in the form of a dislike of any kind of 'action at a distance'. — Berkeley was the first to criticize the explanation by hidden essences, whether these are introduced to 'explain' Newton's attraction, or whether they lead to a Cartesian theory of push; he demanded that science should describe, rather than explain by essential or necessary connections. This doctrine, which became one of the main characteristics of positivism, loses its point if our theory of causal explanation is adopted; for explanation becomes then a kind of description; it is a description which makes use of universal hypotheses, initial conditions, and logical deduction. To Hume (who was partly anticipated by Sextus Empiricus, Al-Gazzali, and others) is due what may be called the most important contribution to the theory of causation; he pointed out (as against the Cartesian view) that we cannot know anything about a necessary connection between an event A and another event B. All we can possibly know is that events of the kind A (or events similar to A) have so far been followed by events of the kind B (or events similar to B). We can know that, in point of fact, such events were connected; but since we do not know that this connection is a necessary one, we can say only that it has held good in the past. Our theory fully recognizes this Humean criticism. But it differs from Hume (1) in that it explicitly formulates the universal hypothesis that events of the kind A are always and everywhere followed by events of the kind B; (2) that it asserts the truth of the statement that A is the cause of B, provided that the universal hypothesis is true. — Hume, in other words, only looked at the events A and B themselves; and he could not find any trace of a causal link or a necessary connection between these two. But we add a third thing, a universal law; and with respect to this law, we may speak of a causal link, or even of a necessary connection. We could, for example, define: Event B is causally linked (or necessarily connected) with event A if and only if A is the cause of B (in the sense of our semantic definition given above). — Concerning the question of the truth of a universal law, we may say that there are countless universal laws whose truth we never question in daily life; and accordingly, there are also countless cases of causation where in daily life we never question the 'necessary causal link'. From the point of scientific method, the position is different. For we can never rationally establish the truth of scientific laws; all we can do is to test them severely, and to eliminate the false ones (this is perhaps the crux of my The Logic of Scientific Discovery). Accordingly, all scientific laws retain for ever a hypothetical character; they are assumptions. And consequently, all statements about specific causal connections retain the same hypothetical character. We can never be certain (in a scientific sense) that A is the cause of B, precisely because we can never be certain whether the universal hypothesis in question is true, however well it may be tested. Yet, we shall be inclined to find the specific hypothesis that A is the cause of B the more acceptable the better we have tested and confirmed the corresponding universal hypothesis. (For my theory of confirmation, see chapter X and also appendix *ix of The Logic of Scientific Discovery, especially p. 275, where the temporal coefficients or indices of confirmation sentences are discussed.)

(3) Concerning my theory of historical explanation, developed here in the text (further below), I wish to add some critical comments to an article by Morton G. White, entitled 'Historical Explanation' and published m Mind (vol. 52, 1943, pp. 212 ff). The author accepts my analysis of causal explanation, as originally developed in my Logik der Forschung (now translated as The Logic of Scientific Discovery). (He mistakenly attributes this theory to an article by C. G. Hempel, published in the Journal of Philosophy, 1942; see, however, Hempel's review of my book in Deutsche Literaturzeitung, 1937, (8), pp. 310 to 314.) Having found what in general we call an explanation. White proceeds to ask what is historical explanation. In order to answer this question, he points out that the characteristic of a biological explanation (as opposed, say, to a physical one) is the occurrence of specifically biological terms in the explanatory universal laws; and he concludes that an historical explanation would be one in which specifically historical terms would so occur. He further finds that all laws in which anything like specific historical terms occur are better characterized as sociological, since the terms in questions are of a sociological character rather than of an historical one; and he is thus ultimately forced to identify 'historical explanation' with 'sociological explanation'.

It seems to me obvious that this view neglects what has been described here in the text as the distinction between historical and generalizing sciences, and their specific problems and methods; and I may say that discussions on the problem of the method of history have long ago brought out the fact that history is interested in specific events rather than in general laws. I have in mind, for example, Lord Acton's essays against Buckle, written in 1858 (to be found in his Historical Essays and Studies, 1908), and the debate between Max Weber and E. Meyer (see Weber's Gesammelte Aufsaetze zur Wissenschaftslehre , 1922, pp. 215 ff.). Like Meyer, Weber always rightly emphasized that history is interested in singular events, not in universal laws, and that, at the same time, it is interested in causal explanation. Unfortunately, however, these correct views led him to turn repeatedly (e.g. op. cit., p. 8) against the view that causality is bound up with universal laws. It appears to me that our theory of historical explanation, as developed in the text, removes the difficulty and at the same time explains how it could arise.

8. The doctrine that crucial experiments may be made in physics has been attacked by the conventionalists, especially by Duhem (cp. note 1 to this chapter). But Duhem wrote before Einstein, and before Eddington's crucial eclipse observation; he even wrote before the experiments of Lummer and Pringsheim which, by falsifying the formulae of Rayleigh and Jeans, led to the Quantum theory.

9. The dependence of history upon our interest has been admitted both by E. Meyer and by his critic M. Weber. Meyer writes (Zur Theorie und Methodik der Geschichte, 1902, p. 37): 'The selection of facts depends upon the historical interest taken by those living at the present time...' Weber writes (Ges. Aufsaetze, 1922, p. 259): 'Our... interest... will determine the range of cultural values which determines... history. ' Weber, following Rickert, repeatedly insists that our interest, in turn, depends upon ideas of value; in this he is certainly not wrong, but he does not add anything to the methodological analysis. None of these authors, however, draw the revolutionary consequence that, since all history depends upon our interest, there can be only histories, and never a 'history', a story of the development of mankind 'as it happened'. --

For two interpretations of history which are opposed to one another, cp. note 61 to chapter 11.

10. For this refusal to discuss the problem of the 'meaning of meaning' (Ogden and Richards) or rather of the 'meanings of meaning' (H. Gomperz), cp. chapter 11, especially notes 26, 47, 50, and 51. See also note 25 to the present chapter.

11. For moral futurism, cp. chapter 22.

12. Cp. K. Barth, Credo (1936), p. 12. For Earth's remark against 'the Neo-Protestant doctrine of the revelation of God in history', cp. op. cit, 142. See also the Hegelian source of this doctrine, quoted in text to note 49, chapter 12. Cp. also note 51 to chapter 24. For the next quotation cp. Barth, op. cit., 79.

* Concerning my remark that the story of Christ was /to/ 'the story of an unsuccessful... nationalist revolution', I am now inclined to believe that it may have been precisely this; see R. Eisler's book Jesus Basileus. But in any case, it is not a story of worldly success.*

13. Cp. Barth, op. cit., 76.

14. Cp. Kierkegaard's Journal of 1854; see the German edition (1905) of his Book of the Judge, p. 135.

15. Cp. note 57 to chapter 11, and text.

16. Cp. the concluding sentences of Macmurray's The Clue to History (1938; p. 237).

17. Cp. especially note 55 to chapter 24, and text.

18. Kierkegaard was educated at the University of Copenhagen in a period of intense and even somewhat aggressive Hegelianism. The theologian Martensen was especially influential. (For this aggressive attitude, cp. the judgement of the Copenhagen Academy against Schopenhauer's prize essay on the Foundations of Morals, of 1840. It is very likely that this affair was instrumental in making Kierkegaard acquainted with Schopenhauer, at a time when the latter was still unknown in Germany.)

19. Cp. Kierkegaard's Journal of 1853; see the German edition of his Book of the Judge, p. 129, from which the passage in the text is freely translated.

Kierkegaard is not the only Christian thinker protesting against Hegel's historicism; we have seen (cp. note 12 to this chapter) that Barth also protests against it. A remarkably interesting criticism of Hegel's teleological interpretation of history was given by the Christian philosopher, M. B. Foster, a great admirer (if not a follower) of Hegel, at the end of his book The Political Philosophies of Plato and Hegel. The main point of his criticism, if I understand him rightly, is this. By interpreting history teleologically, Hegel does not see, in its various stages, ends in themselves, but merely means for bringing about the final end. But Hegel is wrong in assuming that historical phenomena or periods are means to an end which can be conceived and stated as something distinguishable from the phenomena themselves, in a way in which a purpose can be distinguished from the action which seeks to realize it, or a moral from a play (if we wrongly assume that the sole purpose of the play was to convey this moral). For this assumption, Foster contends, shows a failure to recognize the difference between the work of a creator and that of an instrument maker, a technician or 'Demiurge', '...a series of works of creation may be understood as a development', Foster writes (pp. cit, pp. 201-3), without a distinct conception of the end to which they progress... the painting, say, of one era may be understood to have developed out of the era preceding it, without being understood as a nearer approximation to a perfection or end... Political history, similarly,... may be understood as development, without being interpreted as a teleological process. — But Hegel, here and elsewhere, lacks insight in the significance of creation.' And later, Foster writes (op. cit, p. 204; italics partly mine): 'Hegel regards it as a sign of inadequacy of the religious imagery that those who hold it, while they assert that there is a plan of Providence, deny that the plan is knowable... To say that the plan of Providence is inscrutable is, no doubt, an inadequate expression, but the truth which it expresses inadequately is not that God's plan is knowable, but that, as Creator and not as a Demiurge, God does not work according to plan at all.'

I think that this criticism is excellent, even though the creation of a work of art may, in a very different sense, proceed according to a 'plan' (although not an end or purpose); for it may be an attempt to realize something like the Platonic idea of that work — that perfect model before his mental eyes or ears which the painter or musician strives to copy. (Cp. note 9 to chapter 9 and notes 25-26 to chapter 8.)

20. For Schopenhauer's attacks upon Hegel, to which Kierkegaard refers, cp. chapter 12, for example, text to note 13, and the concluding sentences. The partly quoted continuation of Kierkegaard's passage is op. cit., 130. (In a note, Kierkegaard later inserted 'pantheist' before 'putridity'.)

21. Cp. chapter 6, especially text to note 26.

22. For the Hegelian ethics of domination and submission, cp. note 25 to chapter 11. For the ethics of hero-worship, cp. chapter 12, especially text to notes 75 ff.

23. Cp. chapter 5 (especially text to note 5).

24. We can 'express ourselves' in many ways without communicating anything. For our task of using language for the purpose of rational communication, and for the need of keeping up the standards of clarity of the language, cp. notes 19 and 20 to chapter 24 and note 30 to chapter 12.

25. This view of the problem of the 'meaning of life' may be contrasted with Wittgenstein's view of the problems of the 'sense of life' in the Tractatus (p. 187): 'The solution of the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of this problem. — (Is not this the reason why men to whom after long doubting the sense of life became clear, could not then say wherein this sense consisted?)' For Wittgenstein's mysticism, see also note 32 to chapter 24. For the interpretation of history here suggested, cp. notes 61 (1) to chapter 11, and 27 to the present chapter.

26. Cp., for example, note 5 to chapter 5 and note 19 to chapter 24.

It may be remarked that the world of facts is in itself complete (since every decision can be interpreted as a fact). It is therefore for ever impossible to refute a monism which insists that there are only facts. But irrefutability is not a virtue. Idealism, for example, cannot be refuted either.

27. It appears that one of the motives of historicism is that the historicist does not see that there is a third alternative, besides the two which he allows: either that the world is ruled by superior powers, by an 'essential destiny' or Hegelian 'Reason', or that it is a mere wheel of chance, irrational, on the level of a gamble. there is a third possibility: that we may introduce reason into it (cp. note 19 to chapter 24); that although the world does not progress, we may progress, individually as well as in co-operation.

This third possibility is clearly expressed by H. A. L. Fisher in his History of Europe (vol. I, p. vii, italics mine; partly quoted in text to note 8 to chapter 21): 'One intellectual excitement has... been denied me. Men wiser and more learned than I have discerned in history a plot, a rhythm, a pre-determined pattern. These harmonies are concealed from me. I can see only one emergency following upon another as wave follows wave, only one great fact with respect to which, since it is unique, there can be no generalizations , only one safe rule for the historian: that he should recognize... the play of the contingent and the unforeseen.' And immediately after this excellent attack upon historicism (with the passage in italics, cp. note 13 to chapter 13), Fisher continues: 'This is not a doctrine of cynicism and despair. The fact of progress is written plain and large on the page of history; but progress is not a law of nature. The ground gained by one generation may be lost by the next'.

These last three sentences represent very clearly what I have called the 'third possibility', the belief in our responsibility, the belief that everything rests with us. And it is interesting to see that Fisher's statement is interpreted by Toynbee (A Study of History, vol. V, 414) as representing 'the modem Western belief in the omnipotence of Chance'. Nothing could show more clearly the attitude of the historicist, his inability to see the third possibility. And it explains perhaps why he tries to escape from this alleged 'omnipotence of chance' into a belief in the omnipotence of the power behind the historical scene — that is, into historicism. (Cp. also note 61 to chapter 11.)

I may perhaps quote more fully Toynbee's comments on Fisher's passage (which Toynbee quotes down to the words 'the unforeseen'): 'This brilliantly phrased passage', Toynbee writes, 'cannot be dismissed as a scholar's conceit; for the writer is a Liberal who is formulating a creed which Liberalism has translated from theory into action... This modern Western belief in the omnipotence of Chance gave birth in the nineteenth century of the Christian Era, when things still seemed to be going well with Western Man, to the policy of laissez faire...' (Why the belief in a progress for which we ourselves are responsible should imply a belief in the omnipotence of Chance, or why it should produce the policy of laissez-faire, Toynbee leaves unexplained.)

28. By the 'realism' of the choice of our ends I mean that we should choose ends which can be realized within a reasonable span of time, and that we should avoid distant and vague Utopian ideals, unless they determine more immediate aims which are worthy in themselves. Cp. especially the principles of piecemeal social engineering, discussed in chapter 9.

The final manuscript of volume I of the first edition of this book was completed in October, 1942, and that of volume II in February, 1943.

In the second edition of this book, I made a lengthy addition to note 9 to chapter 6 (pp. 248 to 253). The historical hypothesis propounded in this note was later amplified in my paper 'The Nature of Philosophical Problems and Their Roots in Science' (British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 3, 1952, pp. 124 ff.; now also in my Conjectures and Refutations). It may be restated as follows: (1) the discovery of the irrationality of the square root of two which led to the breakdown of the Pythagorean programme of reducing geometry and cosmology (and presumably all knowledge) to arithmetic, produced a crisis in Greek mathematics; (2) Euclid's Elements are not a textbook of geometry, but rather the final attempt of the Platonic School to resolve this crisis by reconstructing the whole of mathematics and cosmology on a geometrical basis, in order to deal with the problem of irrationality systematically rather than ad hoc, thus inverting the Pythagorean programme of arithmetization; (3) it was Plato who first conceived the programme later carried out by Euclid: it was Plato who first recognized the need for a reconstruction; who chose geometry as the new basis, and the geometrical method of proportion as the new method; who drew up the programme for a geometrization of mathematics, including arithmetic, astronomy, and cosmology; and who became the founder of the geometrical picture of the world, and thereby also the founder of modern science — of the science of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, and Newton.

I suggested that the famous inscription over the door of Plato's Academy (p. 248, (2)) alluded to this programme of geometrization. (That it was intended to announce an inversion of the Pythagorean programme seems likely in view of Archytas, fragment A, Diels-Kranz.)

In the middle of the last paragraph on p. 249 I suggested 'that Plato was one of the first to develop a specifically geometrical method aiming at rescuing what could be rescued ... from the breakdown of Pythagoreanism'; and I described this suggestion as 'a highly uncertain historical hypothesis'. I no longer think that the hypothesis is so very uncertain. On the contrary, I now feel that a re-reading of Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, and Proclus, in the light of this hypothesis, would produce as much corroborating evidence as one could expect. In addition to the confirming evidence referred to in the paragraph quoted, I now wish to add that already the Gorgias (451a/b; c; 453e) takes the discussion of 'odd' and 'even' as characteristic of arithmetic, thereby, clearly identifying arithmetic with Pythagorean number theory, while characterizing the geometer as the man who adopts the method of proportions (465b/c). Moreover, in the passage from the Gorgias (508a) Plato speaks not only of geometrical equality (cp. note 48 to chapter 8) but he also states implicitly the principle which he was later to develop fully in the Timaeus: that the cosmic order is a geometrical order. Incidentally, the Gorgias also proves that the word 'alogos' was not associated in Plato's mind with irrational numbers, since 465a says that even a technique, or art, must not be alogos; which would hold a fortiori for a science such as geometry. I think we may simply translate 'alogos' as 'alogical'. (Cp. also Gorgias 496a/b; and 522e.) The point is important for the interpretation of the title of Democritus's lost book, mentioned earlier on p. 249.

My paper on 'The Nature of Philosophical Problems' (see above) contains some further suggestions concerning Plato's geometrization of arithmetic and of cosmology in general (his inversion of the Pythagorean programme), and his theory of forms.

Added in 1961

Since this addendum was first published in 1957, in the third edition of this book, I have found, almost by accident, some interesting corroboration of the historical hypothesis formulated above, in the first paragraph under (2). It is a passage in Proclus' commentaries to the First Book of Euclid's Elements (ed. Friedlein, 1873, Prologus ii, p. 71, 2-5) from which it becomes clear that there existed a tradition according to which Euclid's elements were a Platonic cosmology, a treatment of the problems of the Timaeus.

II. The Dating of the Theaetetus (1961)

There is a hint in note 50 (6), to chapter 8, p. 281, that 'the Theaetetus is perhaps (as against the usual assumption) earlier than the Republic'. This suggestion was made to me by the late Dr. Robert Eisler in a conversation not long before his death in 1949. But since he did not tell me any more about his conjecture than that it was partly based on Theaetetus 174e, f. — the crucial passage whose post-Republican dating did not seem to me to fit into my theory — I felt that there was not sufficient evidence for it, and that it was too ad hoc to justify me in publicly saddling Eisler with the responsibility for it.

However, I have since found quite a number of independent arguments in favour of an earlier dating of the Theaetetus, and I therefore wish now to acknowledge Eisler's original suggestion.

Since Eva Sachs (cp. Socrates, 5, 1917, 531 f.) established that the proem of the Theaetetus, as we know it, was written after 369, the conjecture of a Socratic core and an early dating involves another — ^that of an earlier lost edition, revised by Plato after Theaetetus' death. The latter conjecture was proposed independently by various scholars, even before the discovery of a papyrus (ed. by Diels, Berlin, Klassikerhefte, 2, 1905) that contains part of a Commentary to the Theaetetus and refers to two distinct editions. The following arguments seem to support both conjectures.

(1) Certain passages in Aristotle seem to allude to the Theaetetus: they fit the text of the Theaetetus perfectly, and they claim, at the same time, that the ideas there expressed belong to Socrates rather than to Plato. The passages I have in mind are the ascription to Socrates of the invention of induction (Metaphysics 1078b 17-33; cp. 987b1 and 1086b3) which, I think, is an allusion to Socrates' maieutic (developed at length in the Theaetetus), his method of helping the pupil to perceive the true essence of a thing through purging his mind of his false prejudices; and the further ascription to Socrates of the attitude so strongly expressed again and again in the Theaetetus: 'Socrates used to ask questions and not to answer them; for he used to confess that he did not know' (Soph. EL 183b7). (These passages are discussed, in a different context, in my lecture On the Sources of Knowledge and of Ignorance, Proceedings of the British Academy, 46, 1960 (see especially p. 50) which is also separately published by Oxford University Press and is now included in my Conjectures and Refutations.)

(2) The Theaetetus has a surprisingly inconclusive ending, even though it turns out that it was so planned and prepared almost from the beginning. (In fact, as an attempt to solve the problem of knowledge which it ostensibly tries to do, this beautiful dialogue is a complete failure.) But endings of a similarly inconclusive nature are known to be characteristic of a number of early dialogues.

(3) 'Know thyself is interpreted, as in the Apology, as 'Know how little you know'. In his final speech Socrates says 'After this, Theaetetus . . . you will be less harsh and gentler to your associates, for you will have the wisdom not to think that you know what you do not know. So much my art [of maieutic] can accomplish; nor do I know any of the things that are known by others . . . '

(4) That ours is a second edition, revised by Plato, seems likely, especially in view of the fact that the Introduction to the dialogue (142a to the end of 143c) which might well have been added as a memorial to a great man, actually contradicts a passage which may have survived the revision of the earlier edition of this dialogue; I mean its very end which, like a number of other early dialogues, alludes to Socrates' trial as imminent. The contradiction consists in the fact that Euclid, who appears as a character in the Introduction and who narrates how the dialogue came to be written down, tells us (142c/d, 143a) that he went repeatedly to Athens (from Megara, presumably), using every time the opportunity of checking his notes with Socrates, and making 'corrections' here and there. This is told in a way which makes it quite clear that the dialogue itself must have taken place at least several months before Socrates' trial and death; but this is inconsistent with the ending of the dialogue. (I have not seen any reference to this point, but I cannot imagine that it has not been discussed by some Platonist.) It may even be that the reference to 'corrections', in 143a, and also the much discussed description of the 'new style' in 143b-c (see for example C. Ritter's Plato, vol. I, 1910, pp. 220 f.) were introduced in order to explain some deviations of the revised edition from the original edition. (This would make it possible to place the revised edition even after the Sophist.)

III. Reply to a Critic (1961)

I have been asked to say something in reply to the critics of this volume. But before doing so, I should like to thank again those whose criticism has helped me to improve the book in various ways.

Of the others — those I have come across — I feel reluctant to say much. In attacking Plato I have, as I now realize, offended and hurt many Platonists, and I am sorry for this. Still, I have been surprised by the violence of some of the reactions.

I think most of the defenders of Plato have denied facts which, it seems to me, cannot be seriously denied. This is true even of the best of them: Professor Ronald B. Levinson in his monumental book (645 closely printed pages) In Defense of Plato.

In trying to answer Professor Levinson I have before me two tasks of very unequal importance. The less important task — defending myself against a number of accusations — ^will be tackled first (in section A), so that the more important task — replying to Professor Levinson's defence of Plato (in section B) — will not be too much obscured by my personal defence.

A

The portrait of myself painted by Professor Levinson has caused me to doubt the truth of my own portrait of Plato; for if it is possible to derive from a living author's book so distorted an image of his doctrines and intentions, what hope can there be of producing anything like a true portrait of an author born almost twenty-four centuries ago?

Yet how can I defend myself against being identified with the supposed original of the portrait painted by Professor Levinson? All I can do is to show that some at least of the mistranslations, misrepresentations, and distortions of Plato with which Professor Levinson charges me are really non-existent. And even this I can only do by analysing two or three representative samples, taken at random from hundreds: there seem to be more such charges in the book than there are pages. Thus all I can do is to prove that some at least of the most violent accusations levelled against me are baseless.

I should have liked to do this without raising any counter-accusation of misquotation, etc.; but as this has turned out to be impossible, I wish to make it quite clear that I now see that Professor Levinson, like other Platonists, must have found my book not only exasperating, but almost sacrilegious. And since I am that man by whom the offence cometh, I must not complain if I am bitterly denounced.

So let us examine a few of the relevant passages. Professor Levinson writes (p. 273, note 72) of me: 'As with others of whom he disapproves, so here with Critias, Popper has further blackened his character by exaggeration. For the verses cited represent religion, though a fabrication, as being aimed at the general good of society, not at the selfish benefit of the cunning fabricator himself.

Now if this means anything, it must mean that I have asserted, or at least hinted, in the passages quoted by Professor Levinson (that is, pp. 179 and 140 of A, which corresponds to pp. 183-184, and pp. 142-143 of E[1]) that Critias' verses which I have quoted represent religion not only as a fabrication, but as a fabrication 'aimed ... at the selfish benefit of the cunning fabricator himself.'

I deny that I either asserted, or even hinted at, anything of the kind. On the contrary, my concern has been to point out that the 'general good of society' is one of the dominant preoccupations of Plato, and that his attitude in this respect 'is practically identical with that of Critias'. The basis of my criticism is clearly announced at the beginning of chapter 8 (second paragraph) where I write: '"For the benefit of the city", says Plato. Again we find that the appeal to the principle of collective utility is the ultimate ethical consideration. '

What I assert is that this moral principle which posits 'the general good of society' as a moral aim, is not good enough as a basis of ethics; for example, that it leads to lying — 'for the general good of society' or 'for the benefit of the city'. In other words, I try to show that ethical collectivism is mischievous, and that it corrupts. But I nowhere interpret Critias' quoted verses in the sense alleged by Professor Levinson. I should be inclined to ask 'Who blackens whose character by exaggeration?', were it not for the fact that I recognize that the severity of my attack was a provocation which excuses Professor Levinson's charges. But it does not make them true.

A second example is this. Professor Levinson writes (pp. 354 f.): 'One of Popper's most extravagant assertions is that Plato had viewed as a "favourable circumstance" the presence in Athens of Spartan troops, summoned to assist the Thirty in maintaining themselves and their iniquitous regime and had felt no other emotion than approval at the thought of Athens beneath the Spartan yoke; he would have been prepared, we are led to suppose, to summon them again, if their presence could aid him in achieving his neooligarchical revolution. There is no text which Popper can cite in support of such a charge; it arises solely from his picture of Plato as a third head upon the double-headed monster he has created, called "the Old Oligarch and Critias"; it is guilt by association, the very ultimate example of the witch-hunt technique.'

To this my reply is: if this is one of my 'most extravagant assertions', then I cannot have made any extravagant assertions. For this assertion was never made by me; nor does it fit into the picture which I have of Plato, and which I have tried — not wholly successfully, it seems — to convey.

I do believe that Plato was led, by his distrust of the common man, and by his ethical collectivism, to approve of violence; but I simply never have made any assertion about Plato even faintly similar to the one which Professor Levinson here asserts, somewhat extravagantly, that I have made. There is therefore no text which Professor Levinson can cite in support of his charge that I have made this assertion: it arises solely from his picture of Popper as a third head upon the double-headed monster of Otto Neurath and J. A. Lauwerys which Professor Levinson has created; and as to 'guilt by association', I can only refer to Professor Levinson's p. 441. There he is 'helped towards answering this question' — the question of 'the predisposing cause that leads Popper chronically to indulge these sinister imaginings' — by associating me with 'an older compatriot of Popper's, the late versatile Austrian philosopher and sociologist, Otto Neurath'. (In fact neither Neurath nor I had any sympathy for the other's philosophy, as emerges only too clearly from Neurath's and my own writings; Neurath, for example, defended Hegel, and attacked both Kantianism and my own praise of Kant. Of Neurath's attack on Plato I heard for the first time when I read about it in Professor Levinson's book; and I have not yet seen Neurath's relevant papers.)

But to return to my alleged 'extravagant assertion': what I actually said (p. 195E = 190A) about Plato's feelings is almost the opposite of what Professor Levinson (p. 354) reports. I did not at all suggest that Plato viewed as a 'favourable circumstance' the presence in Athens of Spartan troops, or that he 'felt no other emotion than approval at the thought of Athens beneath the Spartan yoke'. What I tried to convey, and what I said, was that the Thirty Tyrants had failed 'in spite of favourable circumstances in the shape of powerful support from victorious Sparta'; and I suggested that Plato saw the cause of their failure — just as I do — in the moral failure of the Thirty. I wrote: 'Plato felt that a complete reconstruction of the programme was needed. The Thirty had been beaten in the realm of power politics largely because they had offended the citizens' sense of justice. The defeat had been largely a moral defeat.'

This is all I say here of Plato's feelings. (I say twice 'Plato felt'.) I suggest that the failure of the Thirty induced a partial moral conversion in Plato — though not a sufficiently far-reaching one. There is no suggestion here of those feelings which Professor Levinson makes me attribute to Plato; and I would never have dreamt that anybody could read this into my text.

I certainly do attribute to Plato a measure of sympathy with the Thirty Tyrants and especially with their pro- Spartan aims. But this is of course something completely different from the 'extravagant assertions' which Professor Levinson attributes to me. I can only say that I did suggest that he admired his uncle Critias, the leader of the Thirty. I did suggest that he was in sympathy with some of Critias' aims and views. But I also said that he considered the oligarchy of the Thirty as a moral failure, and that this led him to reconstruct his collectivist morality.

It will be seen that my answer to two of Professor Levinson' s charges has taken up almost as much space as the charges themselves. This is unavoidable; and I must therefore confine myself to only two further examples (out of hundreds), both connected with my alleged mistranslations of Plato's text.

The first is Professor Levinson's allegation that I worsen, or exaggerate, Plato's text. 'Popper, however, as before, employs the unfavourable word "deport" in his translation, in place of "send out",' writes Professor Levinson on p. 349, note 244. But this is simply a mistake — Professor Levinson's mistake. If he looks at the passage again, he will find that I employ the word 'deport' where his translation — or rather Fowler's — uses 'banish'. (The part of the passage in which Fowler's translation uses 'send out' simply does not occur in my quotation but is replaced by dots.)

As a consequence of this mistake, it turns out that, in this context. Professor Levinson's remark 'as before' is highly appropriate. For before the passage just discussed he writes of me (p. 348, note 243): 'Popper reenforces his interpretation [p. 166E = p. 162A] of the Platonic passage [Rep. 540e/541a] by slight inaccuracies in the translation, tending to give the impression of greater scorn or violence in Plato's attitude. Thus he translates "send away" (apopempo) as "expel and deport" . . . ' Now first of all, there is another of Professor Levinson's slips here (which makes two in two consecutive footnotes); for Plato does not use here the word 'apopempo', but the word 'ekpempo'. This certainly does not make much difference; yet 'ekpempo' has, at any rate, the 'ex' of ' expel'; and one of its dictionary meanings is 'to drive away' and another 'to send away in disgrace' (or 'to send away with the collateral notion of disgrace' as my edition of Liddell and Scott has it). The word is a somewhat stronger form of 'pempo' — 'to send off, 'to dispatch' — which, if used in connection with Hades ('to send to Hades') 'commonly means to send a living man to Hades, i.e. to kill him'. (I am quoting Liddell and Scott. Nowadays some people might even 'commonly' say 'to dispatch him'. Closely related is the meaning intended when Phaedrus tells us in Plato's Symposium 179e — a passage referred to by Professor Levinson on p. 348 — that the gods, redeeming and honouring Achilles for his valour and his love of Patroclus, 'sent him to the Islands of the Blessed' — while Homer sent him to Hades.) It seems obvious that neither of the translations 'expel' or 'deport' is open to criticism here on scholarly grounds. Yet Professor Levinson is open to criticism when he quotes me as writing 'expel and deport' for I do not use the words in this way. (He would have been at least technically correct had he quoted me 'must be expelled ... and deported': the three dots make some difference here, for to write 'expel and deport' could be an attempt to exaggerate, by way of 're- enforcing' the one expression with the other. Thus this slight inaccuracy tends to re-enforce my alleged misdeed — my alleged re-enforcing of my interpretation of this Platonic passage by slight inaccuracies in my translation.)

But anyhow, this case amounts to nothing. For take the passage in Shorey's translation. (Shorey is, rightly, accepted as an authority by Professor Levinson.) 'All inhabitants above the age of ten', Shorey translates, 'they [the 'philosophers' who have become 'masters of the state'] will send out into the fields, and they will take over the children, remove them from the manners and habits of their parents, and bring them up in their own customs and laws which will be such as we have described.' Now does this not say exactly what I said (though perhaps not quite as clearly as I did on my p. 166E = 162A)? For who can believe that the 'sending out' of 'all the inhabitants above the age of ten' can be anything but a violent expulsion and deportation? Would they just meekly go, leaving their children behind, when 'sent out', if they were not threatened, and compelled, by the 'philosophers' who have become 'masters of the state'? (Professor Levinson's suggestion, p. 349, that they are sent to 'their . . . country estates, outside the city proper' is supported by him, ironically enough, with a reference to the Symposium 179e and the 'Islands of the Blessed', the place to which Achilles was sent by the gods — or more precisely by Apollo's or Paris 's arrow. Gorgias, 526c, would have been a more appropriate reference.) In all this, there is an important principle involved. I mean the principle that there is no such thing as a literal translation', that all translations are interpretations; and that we always have to take the context into account, and even parallel passages.

That the passages with which (on p. 166E = p. 162A) I have associated the one just quoted may indeed be so associated is confirmed by Shorey's own footnotes: he refers, especially, to the passage which I have called the 'canvas-cleaning' passage, and to the 'kill-and-banish' passage from the Statesman, 293 c-e. 'Whether they happen to rule by law or without law, over willing or unwilling subjects; ... and whether they purge the state for its good, by killing or by deporting [or, as Professor Levinson translates with Fowler, 'by killing or banishing'; see above] some of its citizens . . . this form of government must be declared to be the only one that is right.' (See my text, p. 166E = p. 162A.)

Professor Levinson quotes (p. 349) part of this passage more fully than I do. Yet he omits to quote that part which I quoted as its commencement, 'Whether they happen to rule by law or without law, over willing or unwilling subjects'. The point is interesting, because it fits Professor Levinson's attempt to make the kill-and-banish passage appear in an almost innocent light. Immediately after quoting the passage. Professor Levinson writes: 'Fair interpretation of this stated principle [I do not see any 'principle' here stated, unless it is that all is permitted if it is done for the benefit of the state] requires at least a brief indication of the general pattern of the dialogue.' In the course of this 'brief indication' of Plato's aims and tendencies, we hear — without a direct quotation from Plato — that 'Other traditional and currently accepted criteria, such as whether rule be exercised ... over willing or unwilling subjects, or in accord or not in accord with law, are rejected as irrelevant or non-essential'. The words from Professor Levinson's passage which I have here italicized will be seen to be a near-quotation of the commencement (not quoted by Professor Levinson) of my own quotation from Plato's kill-and-banish passage. Yet this commencement appears now in a very harmless light: no longer are the rulers told to kill and banish 'with or without law,' as I indicated; and Professor Levinson's readers get the impression that this question is here merely dismissed as a side issue — as 'irrelevant' to the problem in hand.

But Plato's readers, and even the participants in his dialogue, get a different impression. Even the 'Younger Socrates', who intervened just before (after the commencement of the passage as quoted by me) with the one exclamation 'Excellent!' is shocked by the lawlessness of the proposed killing; for immediately after the enunciation of the kill-and-banish principle (perhaps it really is a 'principle', after all) he says, in Fowler's translation (the italics are of course mine): 'Everything else that you have said seems reasonable; but that government [and such hard measures, too, it is implied] should be carried out without laws is a hard saying.'

I think that this remark proves that the commencement of my quotation — 'by law or without law' — is really meant by Plato to be part of his kill-and-banish principle; that I was right in commencing the quotation where I did; and that Professor Levinson is simply mistaken when he suggests that 'with or without law' is here merely intended to mean that this is a question which is here 'rejected as irrelevant' to the essence of the problem in hand.

In interpreting the kill-and-banish passage, Professor Levinson is clearly deeply disturbed; yet at the end of his elaborate attempt to defend Plato by comparing his practices with our own he arrives at the following view of the passage: 'Looked at in this context, Plato's statesman, with his apparent readiness to kill, banish, and enslave, where we should prescribe either the penitentiary, at one end, or psychiatric social service, at the other, loses much of his sanguinary coloration.'

Now I do not doubt that Professor Levinson is a genuine humanitarian — a democrat and a liberal. But is it not perturbing to see that a genuine humanitarian, in his eagerness to defend Plato, can be led to compare in this fashion our admittedly very faulty penal practices and our no less faulty social services with the avowedly lawless killing and banishing (and enslaving) of citizens by the 'true statesman' — a good and wise man — 'for the benefit of the city'? Is this not a frightening example of the spell which Plato casts over many of his readers, and of the danger of Platonism?

There is too much of this — all mixed with accusations against a largely imaginary Popper — for me to deal with. But I wish to say that I regard Professor Levinson's book not only as a very sincere attempt to defend Plato, but also as an attempt to see Plato in a new light. And though I have found only one passage — and quite an unimportant one — which has led me to think that, in this place, I interpreted Plato's text (though not his meaning) somewhat too freely, I do not wish to create the impression that Professor Levinson's is not a very good and interesting book — especially if we forget all about the scores of places where 'Popper' is quoted, or (as I have shown) slightly misquoted, and very often radically misunderstood.

But more important than these personal questions is the question: how far does Professor Levinson's defence of Plato succeed?

B

I have learnt that when faced with a new attack on my book by a defender of Plato it is best to disregard the smaller points and to look for answers to the following five cardinal points.

(1) How is my assertion met that the Republic and the Laws condemn the Socrates of the Apology (as pointed out in chapter 10, second paragraph of section vi)? As explained in a note (note 55 to chapter 10) the assertion was in effect made by Grote, and supported by Taylor. If it is fair — and I think it is — then it supports also my assertion mentioned in my next point, (2).

(2) How is my assertion met that Plato's anti-liberal and anti-humanitarian attitude cannot possibly be explained by the alleged fact that better ideas were not known to him, or that he was, for those days, comparatively liberal and humanitarian?

(3) How is my assertion met that Plato (for example in the canvas-cleaning passage of the Republic and in the kill-and-banish passage of the Statesman) encouraged his rulers to use ruthless violence 'for the benefit of the state'?

(4) How is my assertion met that Plato established for his philosopher kings the duty and privilege of using lies and deceit for the benefit of the city, especially in connection with racial breeding, and that he was one of the founding fathers of racialism?

(5) What is said in answer to my quotation of the passage from the Laws used as a motto for The Spell of Plato on p. 7 (and, as announced at the beginning of the Notes on p. 203, 'discussed in some detail in notes 33 and 34 to chapter 6')?

I often tell my students that what I say about Plato is — necessarily — merely an interpretation, and that I should not be surprised if Plato (should I ever meet his shade) were to tell me, and to establish to my satisfaction, that it is a misrepresentation; but I usually add that he would have quite a task to explain away a number of the things he had said.

Has Professor Levinson succeeded on Plato's behalf in this task, regarding any of the five points mentioned above?

(1') As to the first point, I ask anybody in doubt to read carefully the text of the last speech made by the Athenian Stranger in book X of the Laws (907d down to, say, 909d). The legislation there discussed is concerned with the type of crime of which Socrates was accused. My contention is that, while Socrates had a way out (most critics think, in view of the evidence of the Apology, that he would probably have escaped death had he been willing to accept banishment), Plato's Laws do not make any such provision. I shall quote from a passage in Bury's translation (which seems to be acceptable to Levinson) of this very long speech. After classifying his 'criminals' (that is, those guilty of 'impiety' or 'the disease of atheism': the translation is Bury's; cp. 908c), the Athenian Stranger discusses first 'those who, though they utterly disbelieve the existence of gods, possess by nature a just character ... and ... are incapable of being induced to commit unjust actions'. (908b-c; this is almost a portrait — of course an unconscious one — of Socrates, apart from the important fact that he does not seem to have been an atheist, though accused of impiety and unorthodoxy.) About these Plato says:

' . . . those criminals . . . being devoid of evil disposition and character, shall be placed by the judge according to law in the reformatory for a period of not less than five years, during which time no other of the citizens shall hold intercourse with them save only those who take part in the nocturnal assembly, and they shall company with them [I should translate 'they shall attend to them'] to minister to their soul's salvation by admonition ...' Thus the 'good' among the impious men get a minimum of five years of solitary confinement, only relieved by 'attention' to their sick souls from the members of the Nocturnal Council. ' . . . and when the period of their incarceration has expired, if any of them seems to be reformed, he shall dwell with those who are reformed, but if not, and if he be convicted again on a like charge, he shall be punished by death. ' I have nothing to add to this.

(2') The second point is perhaps the most important from Professor Levinson's point of view: it is one of his main claims that I am mistaken in my assertion that there were humanitarians — better ones than Plato — among those whom I have called the 'Great Generation'.

He asserts, in particular, that my picture of Socrates as a man very different from Plato in this respect is quite fictitious.

Now I have devoted a very long footnote (note 56 to chapter 10), in fact quite an essay, to this problem — the Socratic Problems and I do not see any reason to change my views on it. But I wish to say here that I have received support in this historical conjecture of mine about the Socratic Problem, from a Platonic scholar of the eminence of Richard Robinson; support which is the more significant as Robinson castigates me severely (and perhaps justly) for the tone of my attack on Plato. Nobody who reads his review of my book (Philosophical Review, 60, 1951) can accuse him of undue partiality for me; and Professor Levinson quotes him approvingly (p. 20) for speaking of my 'rage to blame' Plato. But although Professor Levinson (in a footnote on p. 20) refers to Richard Robinson as 'mingling praise and blame in his extensive review of the Open Society', and although (in another footnote, on p. 61) he rightly refers to Robinson as an authority about 'the growth of Plato's logic from its Socratic beginnings through its middle period'. Professor Levinson never tells his readers that Robinson agrees not only with my main accusations against Plato, but also, more especially, with my conjectural solution of the Socratic Problem. (Incidentally, Robinson also agrees that my quotation mentioned here in point (5) is correct; see below.) Since Robinson, as we have heard, 'mingles praise and blame', some of his readers (anxious to find confirmation for their 'rage to blame' me) may have overlooked the praise contained in the surprising last sentence of the following forceful passage from his review (p. 494):

'Dr. Popper holds that Plato perverted the teaching of Socrates ... To him Plato is a very harmful force in politics but Socrates a very beneficial one. Socrates died for the right to talk freely to the young; but in the Republic Plato makes him take up an attitude of condescension and distrust towards them. Socrates died for truth and free speech; but in the Republic "Socrates" advocates lying. Socrates was intellectually modest; but in the Republic he is a dogmatist. Socrates was an individualist; but in the Republic he is a radical collectivist. And so on.

'What is Dr. Popper's evidence for the views of the real Socrates? It is drawn exclusively from Plato himself, from the early dialogues, and primarily from the Apology. Thus the angel of light with whom he contrasts the demon Plato is known to us only from the demon's own account! Is this absurd? 'It is not absurd, in my opinion, but entirely correct.'

This passage shows that at least one scholar, admitted by Professor Levinson to be an authority on Plato, has found that my view on the Socratic Problem is not absurd.

But even if my conjectural solution of the Socratic Problem should be mistaken, there is plenty of evidence left for the existence of humanitarian tendencies in this period.

Concerning the speech of Hippias, to be found in Plato's Protagoras, 337e (see above p. 70; Professor Levinson seems for once not to object to my translation; see his p. 144), Professor Levinson writes (p. 147): 'We must begin by assuming that Plato is here reflecting faithfully a well-known sentiment of Hippias.' So far Professor Levinson and I agree. But we disagree completely about the relevance of Hippias' speech. On this I have now even stronger views than those I expressed in the text of this volume. (Incidentally, I don't think I ever asserted that there was evidence that Hippias was an opponent of slavery; what I said of him was that 'this spirit was bound up with the Athenian movement against slavery'; thus Professor Levinson's elaborate argument that I am not justified 'in including him [Hippias] among the opponents of slavery' is pointless.)

I now see Hippias' speech as a manifesto — the first perhaps — of a humanitarian faith which inspired the ideas of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution: that all men are brothers, and that it is conventional, man-made, law and custom which divide them and which are the source of much avoidable unhappiness; so that it is not impossible for men to make things better by a change in the laws — ^by legal reform. These ideas also inspired Kant. And Schiller speaks of conventional law as 'the fashion' which sternly ('streng') — Beethoven says 'insolently' ('frech') — divides mankind.

As to slavery, my main contention is that the Republic contains evidence of the existence of tendencies in Athens which may be described as opposition to slavery. Thus the 'Socrates' of the Republic (563b) says, in a speech satirizing Athenian democracy (I quoted it in chapter 4, ii, p. 43E = p. 44 A; but I am here using Shorey's translation): 'And the climax of popular liberty ... is attained in such a city when the purchased slaves, male and female, are no less free than the owners who paid for them.'

Shorey has a number of cross-references to this passage (see footnote below); but the passage speaks for itself. Levinson says of this passage elsewhere (p. 176): 'Let us contribute the just-quoted passage to help fill the modest inventory of Plato's social sins', and on the next page he refers to it when he speaks of 'Another instance of Platonic hauteur'. But this is no answer to my contention that, taken together with a second passage from the Republic quoted in my text (p. 43E = p. 44A), this first passage supplies evidence of an anti-slavery movement. The second passage (which follows in Plato immediately after an elaboration of the first, here quoted at the end of the preceding paragraph) reads in Shorey's translation (Republic 563d; the previous passage was Republic 563b): 'And do you know that the sum total of all these items ... is that they render the souls of the citizens so sensitive that they chafe at the slightest suggestion of servitude [I translated 'slavery'] and will not endure it?'

How does Professor Levinson deal with this evidence? First, by separating the two passages: the first he does not discuss until p. 176, long after he has smashed to bits (on p. 153) my alleged evidence concerning an anti-slavery movement. The second he dismisses on p. 153 as a grotesque mistranslation of mine; for he writes there: 'Yet it is all a mistake; though Plato uses the word douleia (slavery or servitude), it bears only a figurative allusion [my italics] to slavery in the usual sense.'

This may sound plausible when the passage is divorced from its immediate predecessor (only mentioned by Professor Levinson more than twenty pages later, where he explains it by Plato's hauteur); but in its context — in connection with Plato's complaint about the licentious behaviour of slaves (and even of animals) — ^there can be no doubt whatever that, in addition to the meaning which Professor Levinson correctly ascribes to the passage, the passage also bears a second meaning which takes 'douleia' quite literally; for it says, and it means, that the free democratic citizens cannot stand slavery in any form — not only do they not submit themselves to any suggestion of servitude (not even to laws, as Plato goes on to say), but they have become so tender-hearted that they cannot bear 'even the slightest suggestion of servitude' — such as the slavery of 'purchased slaves, male or female'.

Professor Levinson (p. 153, after discussing Plato's second passage) asks: 'in the light of the evidence ... what, then, can fairly be said to remain standing in Popper's case ...? The simplest answer is "Nothing," if words are taken in anything like their literal sense.' Yet his own case rests upon taking 'douleia', in a context which clearly refers to slavery, not in its literal sense but as 'only a figurative allusion', as he himself has put it a few lines earlier.2

And yet, he says of the grotesque 'mistake' I made in translating 'douleia' literally: 'This misreading has borne fruit in the preface to Sherwood Anderson's play Barefoot in Athens . . . where the unsuspecting playwright, following Popper' (Professor Levinson asserts on p. 24 that 'the Andersonian version of Plato plainly bespeaks a close and docile reading of Popper', but he gives no evidence for this strange accusation) 'passes on to his readers in turn the allusion, and declares flatly ... as on Plato's own authority, that the Athenians ... "advocate[d] the manumission of all slaves" . . . '

Now this remark of Maxwell (not Sherwood) Anderson's may well be an exaggeration. But where have I said anything similar to this? And what is the worth of a case if, in its defence, the defender has to exaggerate the views of his opponent, or blacken them by associating them with the (alleged) guilt of some 'docile' reader? (See also the Index to this volume, under 'Slavery'.)

(3') My contention that Plato encouraged his rulers to use ruthless and lawless violence, though it is combated by Professor Levinson, is nowhere really denied by him, as will be seen from his discussion of the 'kill-and-banish' passage of the Statesman mentioned in this Addendum towards the end of section A. All he denies is that a number of other passages in the Republic — the canvas-cleaning passages — are similar, as both Shorey and I think. Apart from this, he tries to derive comfort and moral support from some of our modern violent practices — a comfort which, I fear, will be diminished if he re-reads the passage of the Statesman together with its commencement, quoted by me, but first omitted by Professor Levinson, and later dismissed as irrelevant.

(4') As to Plato's racialism, and his injunction to his rulers to use lies and deceit for the benefit of the state, I wish to remind my readers, before entering into any discussion with Professor Levinson, of Kant's saying (see p. 139E = p. 137A) that though 'truthfulness is the best policy' might be questionable, 'truthfulness is better than policy' is beyond dispute.

Professor Levinson writes (p. 434, referring to my pp. 138 ff. E = pp. 136 ff. A, and especially to p. 150E = p. 148A) very fairly: 'First of all, we must agree that the use of lies in certain circumstances is advocated [my italics] in the Republic for purposes of government This, after all, is my main point. No attempt to play it down or to diminish its significance — and no counterattack on my alleged exaggerations — should be allowed to obscure this admission.

Professor Levinson also admits, in the same place, that 'there can be no doubt that some use of the persuasive art of speech would be required to make the auxiliaries "blame chance and not the rulers" when they are told [see my p. 150E = p. 148 A] that the fall of the lot has determined their marriages, whereas really these are engineered by the rulers for eugenic reasons'.

This was my second main point.

Professor Levinson continues (pp. 434 f.; my italics): 'In this instance we have the only sanctioning by Plato of an outright practical lie,3 to be told, to be sure, for benevolent reasons (and only for such purposes does Plato sanction the telling), but a lie and nothing more. We, like Popper, find this policy distasteful. This lie, then, and any others like it which Plato's rather general permission might justify, constitute such basis as exists for Popper's charge that Plato proposes to use "lying propaganda" in his city.'

Is this not enough? Let us assume that I was wrong in my other points (which, of course, I deny), does not all this at least excuse my suspicion that Plato would not have scrupled to make some further use of his 'rather general permission' of 'the use of lies' — especially in view of the fact that he actually 'advocated' the 'use of lies' as Professor Levinson has it?

Moreover, the lying is here used in connection with 'eugenics', or more precisely, with the breeding of the master race — the race of the guardians.

In defending Plato against my accusation that he was a racialist Professor Levinson tries to compare him favourably with some 'notorious' modem totalitarian racialists whose names I have tried to keep out of my book. (And I shall continue to do so.) He says of these (p. 541; my italics) that their 'breeding schedule' 'was primarily intended to preserve the purity of the master race, din aim which we have been at some pains to show Plato did not share.'

Did he not? Was my quotation from one of the main eugenic discussions of the Republic (460c) perhaps a mistranslation? I wrote (p. 51E = p. 52A); I am here introducing new italics):

'''The race of the guardians must be kept pure," says Plato (in defence of infanticide) when developing the racialist argument that we breed animals with great care while neglecting our own race, an argument which has been repeated ever since.'

Is my translation wrong? Or my assertion that this has been, ever since Plato, the main argument of racialists and breeders of the master race? Or are the guardians not the masters of Plato's best city?

As to my translation, Shorey puts it a little differently; I shall quote from his translation (the italics are mine) also the preceding sentence (referring to infanticide): the offspring of the inferior, and any of those of the other sort who are born defective, they [the rulers] will properly dispose of in secret, so that no one will know what has become of them. "That is the condition," he said, "of preserving the purity of the guardian's breed .'"

It will be seen that Shorey 's last sentence is slightly weaker than mine. But the difference is trifling, and does not affect my thesis. And at any rate, I stick to my translation. 'At all events the breed of the guardians must be preserved pure' or 'If at all events [as we agree] the purity of the breed of the guardians must be preserved' would be a translation which, using some of Shorey's words, brings out precisely the same meaning as my translation in the body of the book (p. 5 IE = p. 52A) and here repeated.

I cannot see, therefore, what the difference is between Professor Levinson's formulation of that 'notorious ... breeding schedule' of the totalitarians, and Plato's formulation of his own breeding aims. Whatever minor difference there may be is irrelevant to the central question.

As to the problem whether Plato allowed — very exceptionally — a mingling of his races (which would be the consequence of promoting a member of the lower race), opinions may differ. I still believe that what I said is true. But I cannot see that it would make any difference if exceptions were permitted. (Even those modern totalitarians to whom Professor Levinson alludes permitted exceptions.)

(5') I have been repeatedly and severely attacked for quoting — or rather misquoting — a passage from the Laws which I have taken as one of the two mottos of The Spell of Plato (the other and contrasting passage is from Pericles' funeral oration). These mottos were printed by my American publishers on the jacket of the American edition; the English editions have no such advertisement. As is usual with jackets, I was not consulted by the publishers about them. (But I certainly have no objection to my American publishers' choice: why should they not print my mottos — or anything else I wrote in the book — on their jackets?)

My translation and interpretation of this passage has been pronounced to be correct by Richard Robinson, as mentioned above; but others went so far as to ask me whether I had not consciously tried to hide its identity, in order to make it impossible for my readers to check the text! And this although I have taken more trouble, I think, than most authors to make it possible for my readers to check any passage quoted or referred to. Thus I have a reference to my mottos at the beginning of my notes — although it is somewhat unusual to make references to one's mottos.

The main accusation against me for using this passage is that I do not say, or do not emphasize sufficiently, that it refers to military matters. But here I have testimony in my favour from Professor Levinson himself who writes (p. 531, footnote; my italics): 'Popper, in citing this passage in his text, p. 102 [= p. 103E] duly emphasizes its reference to military matters.'

Thus this charge is answered. However, Professor Levinson continues: but [Popper] protests simultaneously that Plato means the same "militarist principles" to be adhered to in peace as well as in war, and that they are to be applied to every area of peaceful existence rather than simply to the program of military training. He then quotes the passage with perverse mistranslations which tend to obscure its military reference . . . ' and so on.

Now the first charge here is that I 'protest simultaneously' that Plato means these militarist principles to be adhered to in peace as well as in war. Indeed I have said so — quoting Plato: it is Plato who says so. Should I have suppressed it? Plato says, in Bury's translation of which Professor Levinson approves (though I prefer mine: I ask my readers whether there is any difference of meaning between them, as distinct from one of clarity; see p. 103E = p. 102A): nor should anyone, whether at work or in play, grow habituated in mind to acting alone and on his own initiative, but he should live always both in war and peace, with his eyes fixed constantly on his commander . . . ' (Laws, Loeb Library, vol. ii, p. 477; my italics).

And later (p. 479): 'This task of ruling, and of being ruled by, others must be practised in peace from earliest childhood . . . '

As to mistranslation, I can only say that there is practically no difference between my translation and Bury's — except that I have broken up Plato's two very long sentences which, as they stand, are not quite easy to follow. Professor Levinson says (p. 531) that I have 'made great and illegitimate use' of this passage; and he continues: 'His journalistic misapplication of a selection from it on the dust cover' [the publishers' advertisement; see above] 'and on the title page of Part I of his book will be dissected in our note, where we also print the passage in full.'

The dissection of my 'journalistic misapplication' in this note consists, apart from some alleged 'corrections' of my translation which I do not accept, mainly of the same charge — that I have printed the passage on the jacket and in other important places. For Professor Levinson writes (p. 532; italics mine):

'This small unfairness is entirely eclipsed, however, by what Popper has done with the passage elsewhere. On the title page of Part I of his book, and also on the dust jacket' [who is unfair to whom?] 'he prints a, carefully chosen selection drawn from it, and beside it prints, as its very antithesis, a sentence drawn from Pericles' funeral oration ... This is to print in parallel a political ideal and a proposed military regulation ; yet Popper has not only failed to apprise the reader of this selection of its military reference, but employing the same mistranslations, has deleted absolutely all those parts of the passage which would reveal the fact.' *

My answer to this is very simple, {a) The mistranslations are non-existent, {b) I have tried to show at length that the passage, in spite of its military reference, formulates, like the Pericles passage (which incidentally also has some, though less, military reference), a political ideal — that is, Plato's political ideal.

I have seen no valid reason to change my belief that I am right in holding that this passage — like so many similar passages in the Laws — formulates Plato's political ideal. But whether this belief of mine is true or not, I have certainly given strong reasons for it (reasons which Professor Levinson fails to undermine). And since I have done so, and since Professor Levinson does not at all question the fact that I believe that I have done so, it constitutes neither a 'small unfairness' nor a great one if I try to present the passage as what I believe it to be: Plato's own description of his political ideal — of his totalitarian and militaristic ideal state.

As to my mistranslations, I shall confine myself to the one which Professor Levinson finds important enough to discuss in his text (as distinct from his footnote). He writes, on p. 533:

'A further objection concerns Popper's use of the word "leader." Plato uses "archon," the same word he employs for officials of the state and for military commanders; it is clearly the latter, or the directors of the athletic contests, whom he has here in mind. '

Clearly, there is no case for me to answer. (Should I have perhaps translated 'director'?) Anybody who consults a Greek dictionary can ascertain that 'archon," in its most basic meaning, is properly and precisely rendered by the English word 'leader' (or the Latin ' dux' or the Italian 'il duce'). The word is described, by Liddell and Scott, as a participle of the verb 'archon' whose fundamental meaning, according to these authorities, is 'to be first', either 'in point of Time', or 'in point of Place or Station'. In this second sense the first meanings given are: 'to lead, rule, govern, command, be leader or commander'. Accordingly we find, under archon, 'a ruler, commander, captain ; also, with respect to Athens, the chief magistrates at Athens, nine in number.' This should suffice to show that 'leader' is not a mistranslation, provided it fits the text. That it does can be seen from Bury's own version in which, it will be remembered, the passage is rendered as follows: 'but he should live always, both in war and peace, with his eyes fixed constantly on his commander and following his lead' . In fact, 'leader' fits the text only too well: it is the horrifying fittingness of the word which has produced Professor Levinson's protest. Since he is unable to see Plato as an advocate of totalitarian leadership, he feels that it must be my 'perverse mistranslations' (p. 531) which are to be blamed for the horrifying associations which this passage evokes.

But I assert that it is Plato's text, and Plato's thought, which is horrifying. I am, as is Professor Levinson, shocked by the 'leader', and all that this term connotes. Yet these connotations must not be played down if we wish to understand the appalling implications of the Platonic ideal state. These I set out to bring home, as well as I could.

It is perfectly true that in my comments I have stressed the fact that, although the passage refers to military expeditions, Plato leaves no doubt that its principles are to apply to the whole life of his soldier-citizens. It is no answer to say that a Greek citizen was, and had to be, a soldier; for this is true of Pericles and the time of his funeral oration (for soldiers fallen in battle) at least as much as of Plato and the time of his Laws.

This is the point which my mottos were meant to bring out as clearly as possible. This made it necessary to cut out one clause from this unwieldy passage, thereby omitting (as indicated by the insertion of dots) some of those references to military matters which would have obscured my main point: I mean the fact that the passage has a general application, to war and to peace, and that many Platonists have misread it, and missed its point, because of its length and obscure formulation, and because of their anxiety to idealize Plato. This is how the case stands. Yet I am accused in this context by Professor Levinson (p. 532) of using 'tactics' which 'make it necessary to check in merciless detail every one of Popper's citations from the Platonic text', in order to 'reveal how far from the path of objectivity and fairness Popper has been swept'. Faced with these accusations and allegations, and with suspicions cast upon me, I can only try to defend myself. But I am conscious of the principle that no man ought to be judge in his own cause. It is for this reason that I wish here to quote what Richard Robinson says (on p. 491 of The Philosophical Review, 60) about this Platonic passage, and about my translation of it. It should be remembered that Robinson is 'mingling praise with blame' in his review of my book, and that part of the blame consists in the assertion that my translations of Plato are biased. Yet he writes:

'Biased though they are, they should certainly not be disregarded. They draw attention to real and important features of Plato's thought that are usually overlooked. In particular. Dr. Popper's show piece, the horrible passage from Laws 942 about never acting on one's own, is correctly translated. (It might be urged that Plato intended this to apply only to the military life of his citizens, and it is true that the passage begins as a prescription for army discipline; but by the end Plato is clearly wishing to extend it to all life; cf. "the anarchy must be removed from all the life of all the men" [Laws, 942d 1]).'

I feel that I should add nothing to Robinson's statement.

To sum up. I cannot possibly attempt to answer even a fraction of the charges Professor Levinson has brought against me. I have tried to answer only a few of them, bearing in mind, as well as I could, that more important than the problem of who is unfair to whom is the question whether or not my assertions about Plato have been refuted. I have tried to give reasons for my belief that they have not been refuted. But I repeat that no man ought to be judge in his own cause: I must leave it to my readers to decide.

Yet I do not wish to end this long discussion without reaffirming my conviction of Plato's overwhelming intellectual achievement. My opinion that he was the greatest of all philosophers has not changed. Even his moral and political philosophy is, as an intellectual achievement, without parallel, though I find it morally repulsive, and indeed horrifying. As to his physical cosmology, I have changed my mind between the first and second edition (more precisely, between the first English edition and the first American edition) of this book; and I have tried to give reasons why I now think that he is the founder of the geometrical theory of the world', a theory whose importance has continuously increased down the ages. His literary powers I should think it presumptuous to praise. What my critics have shown is, I believe, that Plato's greatness makes it all the more important to fight his moral and political philosophy, and to warn those who may fall under his magic spell.

IV (1965)

In note 3 1 to Chapter 3 I mentioned a number of works which seemed to me to anticipate my views of Plato's politics. Since writing this note I have read Diana Spearman's great attack, of 1939, on appeasers and dictators. Modern Dictatorship. Her chapter, 'The Theory of Autocracy', contains one of the deepest and most penetrating, and at the same time one of the briefest analyses of Plato's political theory that I have seen.

________________

Notes

1 'A' stands in this Addendum for the American editions of 1950 and 1956; 'E' for the present edition and for the English editions from 1932 on.

2 Added in 1965. That the word ' douleia' in the passage in question (Republic 563d) bears this literal meaning (in addition to the figurative meaning which Professor Levinson correctly attributes to it) is confirmed by Shorey, the great Platonist and open enemy of democracy, whom Professor Levinson considers an authority on Plato's text. (I can often agree with Shorey's interpretation of Plato because he rarely tries to humanize or liberalize Plato's text.) For in a footnote which Shorey attaches to the word 'servitude' (douleid) in his translation of Republic 563d, he refers to two parallel passages: Gorgias 491e, and Laws 890a. The first of these reads in W. R. M. Lamb's translation (Loeb Edition): 'For how can a man be happy if he is a slave to anybody at all?' Here the phrase 'to be a slave' has, like the one in the Republic, not only the figurative meaning 'to submit oneself but also the literal meaning; indeed, the whole point is the merging of the two meanings. The passage from the Laws 890a (an elaborate attack on certain Sophists of the Great Generation) reads in Bury's translation (Loeb Edition) as follows: 'these teachers [who corrupt the young men] attract them towards the life . . . "according to nature" which consists in being master over the rest, in reality [ale-theia], instead of being a slave to others, according to legal convention.' Plato clearly alludes here among others to those Sophists (p. TOE = p. 70A and note 13 to chapter 5) who taught that men cannot be slaves 'by nature' or 'in truth', but only 'by legal convention' (by legal fiction). Thus Shorey connects the crucial passage of the Republic by this reference at least indirectly to the great classical discussion of the theory of slavery ('slavery' in the literal sense).

3 It is by no means the only instance, as may be seen from my chapter 8. The passage quoted in the text to note 2, for example (Rep., 389b), is a different instance from the passage {Rep., 460a) which Professor Levinson has in mind. There are several other passages. See Rep., 415d and especially Tim., 18e, which prove that Plato finds his instruction to lie of sufficient importance to be included in the very brief summary of the Republic. (See also Laws, 663d down to 664b.)